Essays of Elia

PRESENTED BY

Ay

/SO

ESSAYS OF ELIA

C^KZ^CeJ of^

a^^^

CHARLES LAilB
From the original eIlgra^^^lg by Henry Meyer
(after his own painting) in the collection of
Ernest Dressel North, Esq.

Zbe Centura Classtcs

ESSAYS OF ELIA

BY

CHAELES LAMB

WITH THE APPRECIATION OF LAMB BY
WALTER PATER

NEW YOEK

Ube Centuri? Co*

MCMII

>"'^"J\ir

o

The text of this volume is that of the 1836 Moxon
edition of the Essays.

P.

Publ.
2?JtHtt

*v* • • ••

Published October, 1902

CONTENTS

PAGE

Charles Lamb vii

The South Sea House 3 /

Oxford in the Vacation 18

A Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years

Ago '^. 29 ^

y The Two Eaces op Men 53

\ New Year's Eve 63

Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist ... 75 '

A Chapter on Ears 88 ^

All Fools' Day 97

A Quakers' Meeting 104

The Old and the New Schoolmaster . 113

Imperfect Sympathies 129

Witches, and Other Night Fears ... 144

Valentine's Day 156

My Relations . / 162 '^

Mackery End, in Hertfordshire ... 174

CONTENTS

PAGE

> My First Play 183

' Modern Gallantry 192

The Old Benchers op the Inner Temple 200 ^'

Grace Before Meat 220

Dream Children ; A Reverie . . . . 233 -

Distant Correspondents. In a Letter
TO B. F., Esq., at Sydney, New South

Wales 241

^The Praise op Chimnby-Sweepbrs ... 252 '^

A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars,

in the Metropolis 265

/ A Dissertation upon Roast Pig .... 279 ^

A Bachelor's Complaint op the Beha-
vior OP Married People 292

On Some op the Old Actors 805

On the Artificial Comedy op the Last

Century 326

On the Acting op Mundbn 341

CHARLES LAMB

THOSE English critics v/lio at the be-
ginning of the present century intro-
duced from Germany, together with
some other subtleties of thought trans-
planted hither not without advantage, the
distinction between the Fancy and the Im-
agination, made much also of the cognate
distinction between Wit and Humor, be-
tween that unreal and transitory mirth,
which is as the crackling of thorns under
the pot, and the laughter which blends
with tears and even with the sublimities
of the imagination, and which, in its most
exquisite motives, is one with pity— the
laughter of the comedies of Shakspere,
hardly less expressive than his moods of
seriousness or solemnity, of that deeply
stirred soul of sympathy in him, as flowing
from which both tears and laughter are
alike genuine and contagious.

This distinction between wit and humor,

iFrom "Appreciations," by Walter Pater. Reprinted by
permission of the Macmillan Company.

CHARLES LAMB

Coleridge and other kindred critics applied,
with much effect, in their studies of some
of our older English writers. And as the
distinction between imagination and fancy,
made popular by Wordsworth, found its
best justification in certain essential dif-
ferences of stuff in Wordsworth's own
writings, so this other critical distinction,
between wit and humor, finds a sort of
visible interpretation and instance in the
character and writings of Charles Lamb;—
one who lived more consistently than most
writers among subtle literary theories, and
whose remains are still full of curious in-
terest for the student of literature as a
fine art.

The author of the English Humorists of
the Eighteenth Century, coming to the hu-
morists of the nineteenth, would have
found, as is true preeminently of Thackeray
himself, the springs of pity in them deep-
ened by the deeper subjectivity, the inten-
ser and closer living with itself, which is
characteristic of the temper of the later
generation; and therewith, the mirth also,
from the amalgam of which with pity humor
proceeds, has become, in Charles Dickens,
for example, freer and more boisterous.

CHARLES LAMB

To this more high-pitched feehng, since
predominant in our Hterature, the writings
of Charles Lamb, whose hfe occupies the
last quarter of the eighteenth century and
the first quarter of the nineteenth, are a
transition; and such union of grave, of ter-
rible even, with gay, we may note in the
circumstances of his life, as reflected
thence into his work. We catch the aroma
of a singular, homely sweetness about his
first years, spent on Thames' side, amid
the red bricks and terraced gardens, with
their rich historical memories of old-fash-
ioned legal London. Just above the poorer
class, deprived, as he says, of the " sweet
food of academic institution," he is fortu-
nate enough to be reared in the classical
languages at an ancient school, where he
becomes the companion of Coleridge, as at
a later period he was his enthusiastic dis-
ciple. So far, the years go by with less
than the usual share of boyish difficulties;
protected, one fancies, seeing what he was
afterwards, by some attraction of temper
in the quaint child, small and delicate, with
a certain Jewish expression in his clear,
brown complexion, eyes not precisely of the
•f;' r color, and a slow walk adding to the

CHARLES LAMB

staidness of his figure; and whose infirmity
of speech, increased by agitation, is partly
engaging.

And the cheerfulness of all this, of the
mere aspect of Lamb's quiet subsequent
life also, might make the more superficial
reader think of him as in himself some-
thing slight, and of his mirth as cheaply
bought. Yet we know that beneath this
blithe surface there was something of the
fateful domestic horror, of the beautiful
heroism and devotedness too, of old Greek
tragedy. His sister Mary, ten years his
senior, in a sudden paroxysm of madness,
caused the death of her mother, and was
brought to trial for what an overstrained
justice might have construed as the great-
est of crimes. She was released on the
brother's pledging himself to watch over
her; and to this sister, from the age of
twenty-one, Charles Lamb sacrificed him-
self, " seeking thenceforth," says his ear-
liest biographer, "no connection which
could interfere with her supremacy in his
affections, or impair his ability to sustain
and comfort her." The "feverish, roman-
tic tie of love," he cast away in exchange
for the "charities of home." Only, from

CHARiLES LAMB

time to time, the madness returned, affect-
ing him too, once; and we see the brother
and sister voluntarily yielding to restraint.
In estimating the humor of Elia, we must
no more forget the strong undercurrent of
this great misfortune and pity than one
could forget it in his actual story. So he
becomes the best critic, almost the discov-
erer, of Webster, a dramatist of genius so
somber, so heavily colored, so macabre.
Rosamund Grey, written in his twenty-
third year, a story with something bitter
and exaggerated, an almost insane fixed-
ness of gloom perceptible in it, strikes
clearly this note in his work.

For himself, and from his own point of
view, the exercise of his gift, of his literary
art, came to gild or sweeten a life of mo-
notonous labor, and seemed, as far as re-
garded others, no very important thing;
availing to give them a little pleasure, and
inform them a little, chiefly in a retrospec-
tive manner, but in no way concerned with
the turning of the tides of the great world.
And yet this very modesty, this unambi-
tious way of conceiving his work, has
impressed upon it a certain exceptional
enduringness. For of the remarkable

CHARLES LAMB

English writers contemporary with Lamb,
many were greatly preoccupied with ideas
of practice— religious, moral, political—
ideas which have since, in some sense or
other, entered permanently into the gen-
eral consciousness; and, these having no
longer any stimulus for a generation pro-
vided with a different stock of ideas, the
writings of those who spent so much of
themselves in their propagation have lost,
with posterity, something of what they
gained by them in immediate influence.
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley even—
sharing so largely in the unrest of their
own age, and made personally more inter-
esting thereby, yet, of their actual work,
surrender more to the mere course of time
than some of those who may have seemed
to exercise themselves hardly at all in
great matters, to have been little serious,
or a little indifferent, regarding them.

Of this number of the disinterested ser-
vants of literature, smaller in England
than in France, Charles Lamb is one. In
the making of prose he realizes the princi-
ple of art for its own sake, as completely
as Keats in the making of verse. And,
working ever close to the concrete, to the

CHARLES LAMB

details, great or small, of actual things,
books, persons, and with no part of them
blurred to his vision by the intervention of
mere abstract theories, he has reached an
enduring moral effect also, in a sort of
boundless sympathy. Unoccupied, as he
might seem, with great matters, he is in
immediate contact with what is real, es-
pecially in its caressing littleness, that
littleness in which there is much of the
whole woeful heart of things, and meets it
more than half-way with a perfect under-
standing of it. What sudden, unexpected
touches of pathos in him!— bearing witness
how the sorrow of humanity, the Welt-
schmerz, the constant aching of its wounds,
is ever present with him: but what a gift
also for the enjoyment of life in its subtle-
ties, of enjoyment actually refined by the
need of some thoughtful economies and
making the most of things! Little arts of
happiness he is ready to teach to others.
The quaint remarks of children which an-
other would scarcely have heard, he pre-
serves—little flies in the priceless amber
of his Attic wit— and has his Praise of
Chimney -sweepers (as William Blake has
written, with so much natural pathos, the

CHARLES LAMB

Chimneysweeper's Song), valuing carefully
their white teeth, and fine enjoyment of
white sheets in stolen sleep at Arundel
Castle, as he tells the story, anticipating
something of the mood of our deep hu-
morists of the last generation. His sim-
ple mother-pity for those who suffer by
accident, or unkindness of nature, blind-
ness for instance, or fateful disease of
mind like his sister's, has something prim-
itive in its largeness; and on behalf of ill-
used animals he is early in composing a
Pity's Gift.

And if, in deeper or more superficial
sense, the dead do care at all for their name
and fame, then how must the souls of
Shakspere and Webster have been stirred,
after so long converse with things that
stopped their ears, whether above or below
the soil, at his exquisite appreciations of
them; the souls of Titian and of Hogarth
too; for, what has not been observed so
generally as the excellence of his literary
criticism, Charles Lamb is a fine critic of
painting also. It was as loyal, self-forget-
ful work for others, for Shakspere's self
first, for instance, and then for Shak-
spere's readers, that that too was done:

CHARLES LAMB

he has the true scholar's way of forgetting
himself in his subject. For though "de-
frauded/' as we saw, in his young years,
"of the sweet food of academic institu-
tion," he is yet essentially a scholar, and
all his work mainly retrospective, as I
said; his own sorrows, affections, percep-
tions, being alone real to him of the pres-
ent. " I cannot make these present times,"
he says once, "present to me.'^

Above all, he becomes not merely an ex-
positor, permanently valuable, but for Eng-
lishmen almost the discoverer of the old
English drama. "The book is such as I
am glad there should be," he modestly
says of the Specimens of English Dramatic
Poets who lived about the time of Shak-
spere; to which, however, he adds in a
series of notes the very quintessence of
criticism, the choicest savor and perfume
of Elizabethan poetry being sorted, and
stored here, with a sort of delicate intellec-
tual epicureanism, which has had the effect
of winning for these, then almost forgot-
ten, poets, one generation after another of
enthusiastic students. Could he but have
known how fresh a source of culture he
was evoking there for other generations.

CHARLES LAMB

through all those years in which, a little
wistfully, he would harp on the limitation
of his time by business, and sigh for a
better fortune in regard to literary oppor-
tunities!

To feel strongly the charm of an old
poet or moralist, the literary charm of
Burton, for instance, or Quarles, or the
Duchess of Newcastle; and then to inter-
pret that charm, to convey it to others-
he seeming to himself but to hand on to
others, in mere humble ministration, that
of which for them he is really the creator
—this is the way of his criticism: cast off
in a stray letter often, or passing note, or
lightest essay or conversation. It is in
such a letter, for instance, that we come
upon a singularly penetrative estimate of
the genius and writings of Defoe.

Tracking, with an attention always alert,
the whole process of their production to
its starting-point in the deep places of the
mind, he seems to realize the but half-
conscious intuitions of Hogarth or Shak-
spere, and develops the great ruling unities
which have swayed their actual work; or
"puts up," and takes, the one morsel of
good stuff in an old, forgotten writer. Even

CHARLES LAMB

in what he says casually there comes an
aroma of old English; noticeable echoes, in
chance turn and phrase, of the great mas-
ters of style, the old masters. Godwin,
seeing in quotation a passage from John
Woodvil, takes it for a choice fragment of
an old dramatist, and goes to Lamb to
assist him in finding the author. His
power of delicate imitation in prose and
verse reaches the length of a fine mimicry
even, as in those last essays of Elia on
Popular Fallacies, with their gentle re-
production or caricature of Sir Thomas
Browne, showing, the more completely, his
mastery, by disinterested study, of those
elements of the man which were the real
source of style in that great, solemn mas-
ter of old English, who, ready to say what
he has to say with fearless homeliness, yet
continually overawes one with touches of a
strange utterance from worlds afar. For
it is with the delicacies of fine literature
especially, its gradations of expression, its
fine judgment, its pure sense of words, of
vocabulary— things, alas! dying out in the
English literature of the present, together
with the appreciation of them in our liter-
ature of the past— that his literary mission

CHARLES LAMB

is chiefly concerned. And yet, delicate, re-
fining, daintily epicurean, as he may seem,
when he writes of giants such as Hogarth
or Shakspere, though often but in a stray
note, you catch the sense of veneration
with which those great names in past liter-
ature and art brooded over his intelligence,
his undiminished impressibility by the
great effects in them. Reading, comment-
ing on Shakspere, he is like a man who
walks alone under a grand stormy sky, and
among unwonted tricks of light, when
powerful spirits might seem to be abroad
upon the air; and the grim humor of Ho-
garth, as he analyzes it, rises into a kind
of spectral grotesque; while he too knows
the secret of fine, significant touches like
theirs.

There are traits, customs, characteristics
of houses and dress, surviving morsels of
old life, such as Hogarth has transferred
so vividly into The Rake's Progress, or
Marriage a la Mode, concerning which we
well understand how, common, uninter-
esting, or even worthless in themselves,
they have come to please us at last as
things picturesque, being set in relief
against the modes of our different age.

CHARLES LAMB

Customs, stiff to us, stiff dresses, stiff fur-
niture—types of cast-off fashions, left by
accident, and which no one ever meant to
preserve— we contemplate with more than
good nature, as having in them the verita-
ble accent of a time, not altogether to be
replaced by its more solemn and self-con-
scious deposits; like those tricks of indi-
viduality which we find quite tolerable in
persons, because they convey to us the se-
cret of lifelike expression, and with regard-
to which we are all to some extent humor-
ists. But it is part of the privilege of the
genuine humorist to anticipate this pensive
mood with regard to the ways and things
of his own day; to look upon the tricks
in manner of the life about him with that
same refined, purged sort of vision, which
will come naturally to those of a later gen-
eration, in observing whatever may have
survived by chance of its mere external
habit. Seeing things always by the light
of an understanding more entire than is
possible for ordinary minds, of the whole
mechanism of humanity, and seeing also
the manner, the outward mode or fashion,
always in strict connection with the spir-
itual condition which determined it, a hu-

CHARLES LAMB

morist such as Charles Lamb anticipates
the enchantment of distance; and the char-
acteristics of places, ranks, habits of life,
are transfigured for him, even now and in
advance of time, by poetic light; justifying
what some might condemn as mere senti-
mentality, in the effort to hand on un-
broken the tradition of such fashion or
accent. "The praise of beggars," "the
cries of London," the traits of actors just
grown "old," the spots in "town" where
the country, its fresh green and fresh
water, still lingered on, one after another,
amidst the bustle; the quaint, dimmed, just
played-out farces, he had relished so much,
coming partly through them to under-
stand the earlier English theater as a thing
once really alive; those fountains and sun-
dials of old gardens, of which he enter-
tains such dainty discourse:— he feels the
poetry of these things, as the poetry of
things old indeed, but surviving as an ac-
tual part of the life of the present, and as
something quite different from the poetry
of things flatly gone from us and antique,
which come back to us, if at all, as entire
strangers, like Scott's old Scotch-border
personages, their oaths and armor. Such

CHARLES LAMB

gift of appreciation depends, as I said, on
the habitual apprehension of men's hfe as
a whole— its organic wholeness, as extend-
ing even to the least things in it— of its
outward manner in connection with its
inward temper; and it involves a fine per-
ception of the congruities, the musical
accordance between humanity and its en-
vironment of custom, society, personal
intercourse; as if all this, with its meet-
ings, partings, ceremonies, gesture, tones
of speech, were some delicate instrument
on which an expert performer is playing.

These are some of the characteristics of
Elia, one essentially an essayist, and of the
true family of Montaigne, "never judging,"
as he says, "system-wise of things, but
fastening on particulars "; saying all things
as it were on chance occasion only, and
by way of pastime, yet succeeding thus,
"glimpse-wise," in catching and recording
more frequently than others "the gayest,
happiest attitude of things"; a casual
writer for dreamy readers, yet always giv-
ing the reader so much more than he
seemed to propose. There is something of
the follower of George Fox about him, and
the Quaker's belief in the inward light com-

CHARLES LAMB

ing to one passive, to the mere wayfarer,
who will be sure at all events to lose no
light which falls by the way— glimpses,
suggestions, delightful half-apprehensions,
profound thoughts of old philosophers,
hints of the innermost reason in things,
the full knowledge of which is held in re-
serve; all the varied stuff, that is, of which
genuine essays are made.

And with him, as with Montaigne, the
desire of self-portraiture is, below all more
superficial tendencies, the real motive in
writing at all— a desire closely connected
with that intimacy, that modern subjec-
tivity, which may be called the Montaign-
esque element in literature. What he
designs is to give you himself, to acquaint
you with his likeness; but must do this, if
at all, indirectly, being indeed always more
or less reserved, for himself and his friends;
friendship counting for so much in his life,
that he is jealous of anything that might
jar or disturb it, even to the length of a
sort of insincerity, to which he assigns its
quaint "praise"; this lover of stage-plays
significantly welcoming a little touch of the
artificiality of play to sweeten the inter-
course of actual life.

CHARLES LAMB

And, in effect, a very delicate and expres-
sive portrait of him does put itself together
for the duly meditative reader. In indirect
touches of his own work, scraps of faded
old letters, what others remembered of his
talk, the man's likeness emerges; what he
laughed and wept at, his sudden elevations,
and longings after absent friends, his fine
casuistries of affection and devices to jog
sometimes, as he says, the lazy happiness
of perfect love, his solemn moments of
higher discourse with the young, as they
came across him on occasion, and went
along a little way with him, the sudden,
surprised apprehension of beauties in old
literature, revealing anew the deep soul of
poetry in things, and withal the pure spirit
of fun, having its way again; laughter, that
most short-lived of all things (some of
Shakspere's even being grown hollow),
wearing well with him. Much of all this
comes out through his letters, which may
be regarded as a department of his essays.
He is an old-fashioned letter-writer, the
essence of the old fashion of letter-writing
lying, as with true essay-writing, in the
dexterous availing oneself of accident and
circumstance, in the prosecution of deeper

CHARLES LAMB

lines of observation; although, just as with
the record of his conversation, one loses
something, in losing the actual tones of the
stammerer, still graceful in his halting, as
he halted also in composition, composing
slowly and by fits, "like a Flemish painter,"
as he tells us, so "it is to be regretted,"
says the editor of his letters, "that in
the printed letters the reader will lose the
curious varieties of writing with which the
originals abound, and which are scrupu-
lously adapted to the subject."

Also, he was a true " collector," delight-
ing in the personal finding of a thing, in
the color an old book or print gets for him
by the little accidents which attest previous
ownership. Wither's Emblems, "that old
book and quaint," long desired, when he
finds it at last, he values none the less be-
cause a child had colored the plates with
his paints. A lover of household warmth
everywhere, of that tempered atmosphere
which our various habitations get by men's
living within them, he " sticks to his favor-
ite books as he did to his friends," and
loved the "town," with a jealous eye for all
its characteristics— "old houses" coming
to have souls for him. The yearning for

CHARLES LAMB

mere warmth against him in another,
makes him content, all through life, with
pure brotherliness, "the most kindly and
natural species of love," as he says, in place
of the passion of love. Brother and sister,
sitting thus side by side, have, of course,
their anticipations how one of them must
sit at last in the faint sun alone, and set us
speculating, as we read, as to precisely
what amount of melancholy really accom-
panied for him the approach of old age, so
steadily foreseen; make us note also, with
pleasure, his successive wakings up to
cheerful realities, out of a too curious mus-
ing over what is gone and what remains
of life. In his subtle capacity for enjoying
the more refined points of earth, of human
relationship, he could throw the gleam of
poetry or humor on what seemed common
or threadbare; has a care for the sighs and
the weary, humdrum preoccupations of
very weak people, down to their little
pathetic "gentilities," even; while, in the
purely human temper, he can write of
death, almost like Shakspere.

And that care, through all his enthusiasm
of discovery, for what is accustomed, in
literature, connected thus with his close

CHARLES LAMB

clinging to home and the earth, was con-
gruous also with that love for the accus-
tomed in religion, which we may notice in
him. He is one of the last votaries of that
old-world sentiment, based on the feelings
of hope and awe, which may be described
as the religion of men of letters (as Sir
Thomas Browne has his Religion of the
Physician)— religion as understood by the
soberer men of letters in the last century,
Addison, Gray, and Johnson; by Jane Aus-
ten and Thackeray, later. A highway of
feeling developed largely by constant inter-
course with the great things of literature,
and extended in its turn to those matters
greater still, this religion lives, in the main
retrospectively, in a system of received
sentiments and beliefs; received, like those
great things of literature and art, in the
first instance, on the authority of a long
tradition, in the course of which they have
linked themselves in a thousand complex
ways to the conditions of human life, and
no more questioned now than the feeling
one keeps by one of the greatness— say! of
Shakspere. For Charles Lamb, such form
of religion becomes the solemn background
on which the nearer and more exciting ob-

CHARLES LAMB

jects of his immediate experience relieve
themselves, borrowing from it an expres-
sion of calm; its necessary atmosphere
being indeed a profound quiet, that quiet
which has in it a kind of sacramental effi-
cacy, working, we might say, on the prin-
ciple of the opus operatum, almost without
any cooperation of one's own, towards the
assertion of the higher self. And, in truth,
to men of Lamb's delicately attuned tem-
perament mere physical stillness has its full
value; such natures seeming to long for it
sometimes, as for no merely negative thing,
with a sort of mystical sensuality.

The writings of Charles Lamb are an ex-
cellent illustration of the value of reserve
in literature. Below his quiet, his quaint-
ness, his humor, and what may seem the
slightness, the occasional or accidental
character of his work, there lies, as I said
at starting, as in his life, a genuinely tragic
element. The gloom, reflected at its darkest
in those hard shadows of Rosamund Grey,
is always there, though not always realized
either for himself or his readers, and re-
strained always in utterance. It gives to
those lighter matters on the surface of life

CHARLES LAMB

and literature among which he for the
most part moved, a wonderful force of ex-
pression, as if at any moment these slight
words and fancies might pierce very far
into the deeper soul of things. In his writ-
ing, as in his life, that quiet is not the low-
flying of one from the first drowsy by choice,
and needing the prick of some strong pas-
sion or worldly ambition to stimulate him
into all the energy of which he is capable;
but rather the reaction of nature, after an
escape from fate, dark and insane as in old
Greek tragedy, following upon which the
sense of mere relief becomes a kind of pas-
sion, as with one who, having narrowly
escaped earthquake or shipwreck, finds a
thing for grateful tears in just sitting quiet
at home, under the wall, till the end of
days.

He felt the genius of places; and I some-
times think he resembles the places he
knew and liked best, and where his lot fell
—London, sixty-five years ago, with Covent
Garden and the old theaters, and the Tem-
ple gardens still unspoiled, Thames gliding
down, and beyond to north and south the
fields at Enfield or Hampton, to which,
"with their living trees," the thoughts

CHARLES LAMB

wander "from the hard wood of the desk"
—fields fresher, and coming nearer to town
then, but in one of which the present writer
remembers, on a brooding early summer's
day, to have heard the cuckoo for the first
time. Here, the surface of things is cer-
tainly humdrum, the streets dingy, the
green places, where the child goes a-may-
ing, tame enough. But nowhere are things
more apt to respond to the brighter weather,
nowhere is there so much difference be-
tween rain and sunshine, nowhere do the
clouds roll together more grandly; those
quaint suburban pastorals gathering a cer-
tain quality of grandeur from the back-
ground of the great city, with its weighty
atmosphere, and portent of storm in the
rapid light on dome and bleached stone
steeples.

1878.

r

ESSAYS OP ELIA

THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE

READER, in thy passage from the Bank
—where thou hast been receiving thy
' half-yearly dividends (supposing thou
art a lean annuitant like myself)— to the
Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston,
or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban
retreat northerly— didst thou never observe
a melancholy looking, handsome, brick and
stone edifice, to the left, where Thread-
needle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I
dare say thou hast often admired its mag-
nificent portals ever gaping wide, and dis-
closing to view a grave court, with cloisters
and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-
in or comers-out— a desolation something
like Balclutha's.^

This was once a house of trade— a center
of busy interests. The throng of merchants
was here— the quick pulse of gain— and here
some forms of business are still kept up,
though the soul be long since fled. Here
are still to be seen stately porticos; impos-
ing staircases, offices roomy as the state

1 I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. —

OSSIAN.

ESSAYS OP ELIA

apartments in palaces— deserted, or thinly-
peopled with a few straggling clerks; the
still more sacred interiors of court- and
committee-rooms, with venerable faces of
beadles, doorkeepers— directors seated in
form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead
dividend) at long worm-eaten tables, that
have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-
leather coverings, supporting massy silver
inkstands long since dry;— the oaken wain-
scots hung with pictures of deceased gov-
ernors and subgovernors, of Queen Anne,
and the two first monarchs of the Bruns-
wick dynasty;— huge charts, which subse-
quent discoveries have antiquated;— dusty
maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, and sound-
ings of the Bay of Panama! The long pas-
sages hung with buckets, appended, in idle
row, to walls, whose substance might defy
any, short of the last, conflagration: with
vast ranges of cellarage under all, where
dollars and pieces of eight once lay, an
"unsunned heap," for Mammon to have
solaced his solitary heart withal— long since
dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast
of the breaking of that famous BUBBLE.—

Such is the SOUTH Sea House. At least

such it was forty years ago, when I knew it

—a magnificent relic! What alterations

may have been made in it since, I have had

4

THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE

no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take
for granted, has not freshened it. No wind
has resuscitated the face of the sleeping
waters. A thicker crust by this time stag-
nates upon it. The moths, that were then
battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day-
books, have rested from their depredations,
but other light generations have succeeded,
making fine fretwork among their single
and double entries. Layers of dust have
accumulated (a superfetation of dirt!) upon
the old layers, that seldom used to be dis-
turbed, save by some curious finger, now
and then, inquisitive to explore the mode
of bookkeeping in Queen Anne's reign; or,
with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to
unveil some of the mysteries of that tre-
mendous HOAX, whose extent the petty
peculators of our day look back upon with
the same expression of incredulous admira-
tion and hopeless ambition of rivalry as
would become the puny face of modern con-
spiracy contemplating the Titan size of
Vaux's superhuman plot.

Peace to the manes of the BUBBLE!
Silence and destitution are upon thy walls,
proud house, for a memorial.

Situated, as thou art, in the very heart
of stirring and living commerce— amid the
fret and fever of speculation— with the
5

ESSAYS OF ELIA

Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House
about thee, in the heyday of present pros-
perity, with their important faces, as it
were, insulting thee, their poor neighbor out
of business— to the idle and merely contem-
plative—to such as me, old house! there is
a charm in thy quiet:— a cessation— a cool-
ness from business— an indolence almost
cloistral— which is delightful! With what
reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms
and courts at eventide! They spoke of the
past:— the shade of some dead accountant,
with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me,
stiff as in life. Living accounts and ac-
countants puzzle me. I have no skill in
figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which
scarce three degenerate clerks of the pres-
ent day could lift from their enshrining
shelves— with their old fantastic flourishes
and decorative rubric interlacings— their
sums in triple columniations, set down with
formal superfluity of ciphers— with pious
sentences at the beginning, without which
our religious ancestors never ventured to
open a book of business, or bill of lading—
the costly vellum covers of some of them
almost persuading us that we are got into
some better library— are very agreeable and
edifying spectacles. I can look upon these
defunct dragons with complacency. Thy
6

THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE

heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives
(our ancestors had everything on a larger
scale than we have hearts for) are as good
as anything from Herculaneum. The
pounce-boxes of our days have gone retro-
grade.

The very clerks which I remember in the
South Sea House— I speak of forty years
back— had an air very different from those
in the public offices that I have had to do
with since. They partook of the genius of
the place!

They were mostly (for the establishment
did not admit of superfluous salaries) bache-
lors. Generally (for they had not much to
do) persons of a curious and speculative
turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason
mentioned before; humorists, for they were
of all descriptions; and, not having been
brought together in early life (which has a
tendency to assimilate the members of cor-
porate bodies to each other), but, for the
most part, placed in this house in ripe or
middle age, they necessarily carried into it
their separate habits and oddities, unquali-
fied, if I may so speak, as into a common
stock. Hence they formed a sort of Noah's
ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Do-
mestic retainers in a great house, kept
more for show than use. Yet pleasant
7

ESSAYS OP ELIA

fellows, full of chat— and not a few among
them had arrived at considerable proficiency
on the German flute.

The cashier at that time was one Evans,
a Cambro-Briton. He had something of
the choleric complexion of his countrymen
stamped on his visage, but was a worthy,
sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair,
to the last, powdered and frizzed out, in
the fashion which I remember to have seen
in caricatures of what were termed, in my
young days. Macaronies. He was the last
of that race of beaus. Melancholy as a
gib-cat over his counter all the forenoon, I
think I see him making up his cash (as they
call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he
feared every one about him was a defaul-
ter; in his hypochondry, ready to imagine
himself one; haunted, at least, with the idea
of the possibility of his becoming one: his
tristful visage clearing up a little over his
roast neck of veal at Anderton's at two
(where his picture still hangs, taken a little
before his death by desire of the master of
the coffee-house which he had frequented
for the last five and twenty years), but not
attaining the meridian of its animation till
evening brought on the hour of tea and
visiting. The simultaneous sound of his
well-known rap at the door with the stroke

THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE

of the clock announcing six, was a topic of
never-failing mirth in the families which
this dear old bachelor gladdened with his
presence. Then was his forte, his glorified
hour ! How would he chirp and expand over
a muffin! How would he dilate into secret
history! His countryman, Pennant him-
self, in particular, could not be more elo-
quent than he in relation to old and new
London— the site of old theaters, churches,
streets gone to decay— where Rosamond's
pond stood— the Mulberry Gardens— and
the Conduit in Cheap— with many a pleas-
ant anecdote, derived from paternal tra-
dition, of those grotesque figures which
Hogarth has immortalized in his picture of
iSToon— the worthy descendants of those
heroic confessors, who, flying to this coun-
try from the wrath of Louis the Fourteenth
and his dragoons, kept alive the flame of
pure religion in the sheltering obscurities
of Hog Lane and the vicinity of the Seven
Dials!

Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame.
He had the air and stoop of a nobleman.
You would have taken him for one, had you
met him in one of the passages leading to
Westminster Hall. By stoop, I mean that
gentle bending of the body forwards, which,
in great men, must be supposed to be the
9

ESSAYS OF ELIA

effect of an habitual condescending atten-
tion to the applications of their inferiors.
While he held you in converse, you felt
strained to the height in the colloquy. The
conference over, you were at leisure to
smile at the comparative insignificance of
the pretensions which had just awed you.
His intellect was of the shallowest order.
It did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His
mind was in its original state of white
paper. A sucking babe might have posed
him. What was it then? Was he rich?
Alas, no! Thomas Tame was very poor.
Both he and his wife looked outwardly gen-
tlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all
times within. She had a neat meager per-
son, which it was evident she had not sinned
in over-pampering; but in its veins was
noble blood. She traced her descent, by
some labyrinth of relationship, which I
never thoroughly understood,— much less
can explain with any heraldic certainty at
this time of day,— to the illustrious but
unfortunate house of Derwentwater. This
was the secret of Thomas's stoop. This
was the thought— the sentiment— the
bright solitary star of your lives,— ye mild
and happy pair,— which cheered you in the
night of intellect, and in the obscurity of
your station! This was to you instead of
10

THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE

riches, instead of rank, instead of glittering
attainments: and it was worth them all
together. You insulted none with it; but,
while you wore it as a piece of defensive
armor only, no insult likewise could reach
you through it. Decus et solamen.

Of quite another stamp was the then
accountant, John Tipp. He neither pre-
tended to high blood, nor in good truth
cared one fig about the matter. He
"thought an accountant the greatest char-
acter in the world, and himself the greatest
accountant in it." Yet John was not with-
out his hobby. The fiddle relieved his va-
cant hours. He sang, certainly, with other
notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did,
indeed, scream and scrape most abominably.
His fine suite of official rooms in Thread-
needle Street, which, without anything very
substantial appended to them, were enough
to enlarge a man's notions of himself that
lived in them, (I know not who is the oc-
cupier of them now,) resounded fortnightly
to the notes of a concert of " sweet breasts,"
as our ancestors would have called them,
culled from club-rooms and orchestras—
chorus singers— first and second violon-
cellos—double basses— and clarionets— who
ate his cold mutton and drank his punch
and praised his ear. He sat like Lord Midas
11

ESSAYS OP ELIA

among them. But at the desk Tipp was
quite another sort of creature. Thence all
ideas that were purely ornamental were
banished. You could not speak of anything
romantic without rebuke. Politics were
excluded. A newspaper was thought too
refined and abstracted. The whole duty of
man consisted in writing off dividend war-
rants. The striking of the annual balance
in the company's books (which, perhaps,
differed from the balance of last year in the
sum of 251. Is. 6d.) occupied his days and
nights for a month previous. Not that
Tipp was blind to the deadness of things (as
they called them in the city) in his beloved
house, or did not sigh for a return of the
old stirring days when South Sea hopes
were young— (he was indeed equal to the
wielding of any the most intricate accounts
of the most flourishing company in these
or those days):— but to a genuine account-
ant the difference of proceeds is as nothing.
The fractional farthing is as dear to his
heart as the thousands which stand before
it. He is the true actor, who, whether his
part be a prince or a peasant, must act it
with like intensity. With Tipp form was
everything. His life was formal. His ac-
tions seemed ruled with a ruler. His pen
was not less erring than his heart. He
12

THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE

made the best executor in the world: he was
plagued with incessant executorships ac-
cordingly, which excited his spleen and
soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He
would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little
orphans, whose rights he would guard with
a tenacity like the grasp of the dying hand
that commended their interests to his pro-
tection. With all this there was about him
a sort of timidity— (his few enemies used to
give it a worse name)— a something which,
in reverence to the dead, we will place, if
you please, a little on this side of the heroic.
Nature certainly had been pleased to endow
John Tipp with a sufficient measure of the
principle of self-preservation. There is a
cowardice which we do not despise, because
it has nothing base or treacherous in its
elements; it betrays itself, not you: it is
mere temperament; the absence of the ro-
mantic and the enterprising; it sees a lion
in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras,
"greatly find quarrel in a straw," when
some supposed honor is at stake. Tipp
never mounted the box of a stage-coach in
his life; or leaned against the rails of a bal-
cony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet;
or looked down a precipice; or let off a gun;
or went upon a water-party; or would will-
ingly let you go if he could have helped it:
13

ESSAYS OF ELIA

neither was it recorded of him, that for
lucre, or for intimidation, he ever forsook
friend or principle.

Whom next shall we summon from the
dusty dead, in whom common qualities be-
come uncommon ? Can I forget thee, Henry
Man, the wit, the polished man of letters,
the author, of the South Sea House? who
never enteredst thy office in a morning or
quittedst it in midday— (what didst thou in
an office?)— without some quirk that left a
sting! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now
extinct, or survive but in two forgotten
volumes, which I had the good fortune to
rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three
days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epi-
grammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little
gone by in these fastidious days— thy topics
are staled by the " new-born gauds " of the
time:— but great thou used to be in Public
Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham,
and Shelburne, and Rockingham, and Howe,
and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war
which ended in the tearing from Great
Britain her rebellious colonies,— and Kep-
pel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and Bull,
and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond—
and such small politics.—

A little less facetious, and a great deal
more obstreperous, was fine rattling, rattle-
14

THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE

headed Plumer. He was descended— not in
a right line, reader (for his hneal preten-
sions, like his personal, favored a little of
the sinister bend)— from the Plumers of
Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out;
and certain family features not a little
sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Wal-
ter Plumer (his reputed author) had been
a rake in his days, and visited much in
Italy, and had seen the world. He was
uncle, bachelor uncle, to the fine old Whig
still living, who has represented the county
in so many successive parliaments, and
has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter
flourished in George the Second's days, and
was the same who was summoned before
the House of Commons about a business of
franks, with the old Duchess of Marlbor-
ough. You may read of it in Johnson's life
of Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that
business. It is certain our Plumer did no-
thing to discountenance the rumor. He
rather seemed pleased whenever it was,
with all gentleness, insinuated. But besides
his family pretensions, Plumer was an en-
gaging fellow, and sang gloriously.—

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sang-

est, mild, childlike, pastoral M ; a flute's

breathing less divinely whispering than thy

Arcadian melodies, when, in tones worthy

15

ESSAYS OF ELIA

of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung
by Amiens to the banished duke, which pro-
claims the winter wind more lenient than
for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old
surly M , the unapproachable church-
warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not
what he did, when he begat thee, like
spring, gentle offspring of blustering win-
ter:—only unfortunate in thy ending, which
should have been mild, conciliatory, swan-
like.-

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic
shapes rise up, but they must be mine in
private:— already I have fooled the reader
to the top of his bent;— else could I omit
that strange creature Woollett, who existed
in trying the question, and bought liti-
gations ?— and still stranger, inimitable,
solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity
Newton might have deduced the law of
gravitation. How profoundly would he nib
a pen— with what deliberation would he
wet a wafer!—

But it is time to close— night's wheels
are rattling fast over me— it is proper to
have done with this solemn mockery.

Reader, what if I have been playing with

thee all this while— peradventure the very

nameSf which I have summoned up before

thee, are fantastic— insubstantial— like

16

THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE

Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of
Greece:—

Be satisfied that something answering to
them has had a being. Their importance is
from the past.

17

OXFORD IN THE VACATION

CASTING a preparatory glance at the
bottom of this article— as the wary-
connoisseur in prints, with cursory-
eye (which, while it reads, seems as though
it read not), never fails to consult the quis
sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces
some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Wool-
let— methinks I hear you exclaim. Reader,
Who is Elia ?

Because in my last I tried to divert thee
with some half-forgotten humors of some
old clerks defunct, in an old house of busi-
ness, long since gone to decay, doubtless
you have already set me down in your mind
as one of the selfsame college— a votary of
the desk — a notched and cropt scrivener —
one that sucks his sustenance, as certain
sick people are said to do, through a quill.

Well, I do agnize something of this sort.
I confess that it is my humor, my fancy—
in the fore part of the day, when the mind
of your man of letters requires some relaxa-
tion—(and none better than such as at first
sight seems most abhorrent from his be-
18

OXFORD IN THE VACATION

loved studies)— to while away some good
hours of my time in the contemiplation of
indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods,
flowered or otherwise. In the first place
* * * * * and then it sends
you home with such increased appetite to
your books ******
not to say, that your outside sheets, and
waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into
them, most kindly and naturally, the im-
pression of sonnets, epigrams, essays— so
that the very parings of a counting-house
are, in some sort, the settings up of an
author. The enfranchised quill, that has
plodded all the morning among the cart-
rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks and
curvets so at its ease over the flowery car-
pet-ground of a midnight dissertation.— It
feels its promotion. * * * * *
So that you see, upon the whole, the literary
dignity of Elia is very little, if at all, com-
promised in the condescension.

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many
commodities incidental to the life of a public
office, I would be thought blind to certain
flaws, which a cunning carper might be able
to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I
must have leave, in the fullness of my soul,
to regret the abolition, and doing-away-with
altogether, of those consolatory interstices,
19

ESSAYS OF ELIA

and sprinklings of freedom, through the
four seasons,— the red-letter days, now be-
come, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter
days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and
Barnabas—

Andrew and John, men famous in old times

—we were used to keep all their days holy,
as long back as I was at school at Christ's.
I remember their effigies, by the same token,
in the old Basket Prayer Book. There hung
Peter in his uneasy posture— holy Bartlemy
in the troublesome act of flaying, after the
famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti.— I honored
them all, and could almost have wept the
defalcation of Iscariot— so much did we love
to keep holy memories sacred: — only me-
thought I a little grudged at the coalition
of the better Jude with Simon— clubbing (as
it were) their sanctities together, to make
up one poor gaudy-day between them— as
an economy unworthy of the dispensation.
These were bright visitations in a schol-
ar's and a clerk's life— "far off their coming
shone."— I was as good as an almanac in
those days. I could have told you such a
saint's day falls out next week, or the week
after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some
periodical infelicity, would, once in six years,
20

OXFORD IN THE VACATION

merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better
than one of the profane. Let me not be
thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil
superiors, who have judged the further ob-
servation of these holy tides to be papistical,
superstitious. Only in a custom of such
long standing, methinks, if their Holinesses
the Bishops had, in decency, been first
sounded— but I am wading out of my
depths. I am not the man to decide the
limits of civil and ecclesiastical authority—
I am plain Elia— no Selden, nor Archbishop
Usher — though at present in the thick of
their books, here in the heart of learning,
under the shadow of the mighty Bodley.

I can here play the gentleman, enact the
student. To such a one as myself, who has
been defrauded in his young years of the
sweet food of academic institution, nowhere
is so pleasant, to while away a few idle
weeks at, as one or other of the Universities.
Their vacation, too, at this time of the year,
falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take
my walks unmolested, and fancy myself of
what degree or standing I please. I seem
admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past op-
portunities. I can rise at the chapel bell,
and dream that it rings for me. In moods
of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor.
When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gen-
21

ESSAYS OF ELIA

tleman Commoner. In graver moments, I
proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not
think I am much unlike that respectable
character. I have seen your dim-eyed ver-
gers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a
bow or a curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking
me for something of the sort. I go about
in black, which favors the notion. Only in
Christ Church reverend quadrangle I can
be content to pass for nothing short of a
Seraphic Doctor.

The walks at these times are so much
one's own,— the tall trees of Christ's, the
groves of Magdalen! The halls deserted,
and with open doors, inviting one to slip in
unperceived, and pay a devoir to some
Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress
(that should have been ours) whose portrait
seems to smile upon their overlooked
beadsman, and to adopt me for their own.
Then, to take a peep in by the way at the
butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique
hospitality: the immense caves of kitchens,
kitchen fireplaces, cordial recesses; ovens
whose first pies were baked four centuries
ago; and spits which have cooked for Chau-
cer! Not the meanest minister among the
dishes but is hallowed to me through his
imagination, and the Cook goes forth a
Manciple.

22

OXFORD IN THE VACATION

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what
art thou? that, being nothing, art every-
thing! When thou wert, thou wert not an-
tiquity—then thou wert nothing, but hadst
a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to
look back to with bhnd veneration; thou
thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern!
What mystery lurks in this retroversion?
or what half Januses ^ are we, that cannot
look forward with the same idolatry with
which we forever revert! The mighty
future is as nothing, being everything! the
past is everything, being nothing!

What were thy dark ages ? Surely the
sun rose as brightly then as now, and man
got him to his work in the morning? Why
is it we can never hear mention of them
without an accompanying feeling, as though
a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of
things, and that our ancestors wandered to
and fro groping!

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenf ord, what
do most arride and solace me, are thy
repositories of moldering learning, thy
shelves—

What a place to be in is an old library!
It seems as though all the souls of all the
writers, that have bequeathed their labors
to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as

1 Januses of one face.— Sib Thomas Browne.

23

ESSAYS OP ELIA

in some dormitory, or middle state. I do
not want to handle, to profane the leaves,
their winding-sheets. I could as soon dis-
lodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning,
walking amid their foliage; and the odor of
their old moth-scented coverings is fra-
grant as the first hloom of those sciential
apples which grew amid the happy orchard.

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the
elder repose of MSS. Those varice lectiones,
so tempting to the more erudite palates, do
but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no
Herculanean raker. The credit of the three
witnesses might have slept unimpeached
for me. I leave these curiosities to Porson,
and to G. D.— whom, by the way, I found
busy as a moth over some rotten archive,
rummaged out of some seldom-explored
press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring,
he is grown almost into a book. He stood
as passive as one by the side of the old
shelves. I longed to new-coat him in russia,
and assign him his place. He might have
mustered for a tall Scapula.

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats
of learning. No inconsiderable portion of
his moderate fortune, I apprehend, is con-
sumed in journeys between them and Clif-
ford's Inn— where, like a dove on the asp's
nest, he has long taken up his unconscious
24

OXFORD IN THE VACATION

abode, amid an incongruous assembly of at-
torneys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, pro-
moters, vermin of the law, among whom he
sits, "in calm and sinless peace." The
fangs of the law pierce him not— the winds
of litigation blow over his humble cham-
bers—the hard sheriff's officer moves his
hat as he passes— legal nor illegal discour-
tesy touches him— none thinks of offering
violence or injustice to him— you would as
soon " strike an abstract idea."

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through
a course of laborious years, in an investiga-
tion into all curious matter connected with
the two Universities; and has lately lit upon

a MS. collection of charters, relative to C ,

by which he hopes to settle some disputed
points— particularly that long controversy
between them as to priority of foundation.
The ardor with which he engages in these
liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not met
with all the encouragement it deserved,

either here or at C . Your caputs, and

heads of colleges, care less than anybody
else about these questions.— Contented to
suck the milky fountains of their Alma
Maters, without inquiring into the venerable
gentlewoman's years, they rather hold such
curiosities to be impertinent— unreverend.
They have their good glebe-lands in manu,
25

ESSAYS OP ELIA

and care not much to rake into the title-
deeds. I gather at least so much from other
sources, for D. is not a man to complain.

D. started like an unbroken heifer, when
I interrupted him. A priori it was not very
probable that we should have met in Oriel.
But D. would have done the same, had I
accosted him on the sudden in his own
walks in Clifford's Inn, or in the Temple.
In addition to a provoking short-sighted-
ness (the effect of late studies and watch-
ings at the midnight oil) D. is the most
absent of men. He made a call the other
morning at our friend M.'s in Bedford
Square; and, finding nobody at home, was
ushered into the hall, where, asking for pen
and ink, with great exactitude of purpose he
enters me his name in the book— which
ordinarily lies about in such places, to re-
cord the failures of the untimely or unfor-
tunate visitor— and takes his leave with
many ceremonies, and professions of regret.
Some two or three hours after, his walking
destinies returned him into the same neigh-
borhood again, and again the quiet image of
the fireside circle at M.'s— Mrs. M. presiding
at it like a Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at
her side— striking irresistibly on his fancy,
he makes another call (forgetting that they
were "certainly not to return from the
26

OXFORD IN THE VACATION

country before that day week ")? and disap-
pointed a second time, inquires for pen and
paper as before: again the book is brought,
and in the line just above that in which he
is about to print his second name (his re-
script)—his first name (scarce dry) looks
out upon him like another Sosia, or as if a
man should suddenly encounter his own
duplicate!— The effect may be conceived.
D. made many a good resolution against any
such lapses in future. I hope he will not
keep them too rigorously.

For with G. D.— to be absent from the
body, is sometimes (not to speak it pro-
fanely) to be present with the Lord. At
the very time when, personally encounter-
ing thee, he passes on with no recognition
—or, being stopped, starts like a thing sur-
prised—at that moment. Reader, he is on
Mount Tabor— or Parnassus— or co-sphered
with Plato— or, with Harrington, framing
" immortal commonwealths " — devising
some plan of amelioration to thy country,
or thy species— perad venture meditating
some individual kindness or courtesy, to be
done to thee thyself, the returning con-
sciousness of which made him to start so
guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence.

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the
best in such places as these. He cares not
27

ESSAYS OF ELIA

much for Bath. He is out of his element
at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrowgate.
The Cam and the Isis are to him "better
than all the waters of Damascus." On the
Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as one of
the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains;
and when he goes about with you to show
you the halls and colleges, you think you
have with you the Interpreter at the House
Beautiful.

28

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO

rl Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year
or two since, I find a magnificent eulogy
on my old school,^ such as it was, or now
appears to him to have been, between the
years 1782 and 1789. It happens, very oddly,
that my own standing at Christ's was nearly
corresponding with his; and with all grati-
tude to him for his enthusiasm for the
cloisters, I think he has contrived to bring
together whatever can be said in praise of
them, dropping all the other side of the
argument most ingeniously.

I remember L. at school; and can well
recollect that he had some peculiar advan-
tages, which I and others of his school-fel-
lows had not. His friends lived in town,
and were near at hand; and he had the
privilege of going to see them, almost as
often as he wished, through some invidious
distinction, which was denied to us. The
present worthy subtreasurer to the Inner
Temple can explain how that happened.
He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning,

1 Recollections of Christ's Hospital.

29

ESSAYS OP ELIA

while we were battening upon our quarter
of a penny loaf —our crw^r— moistened with
attenuated small beer, in wooden piggins,
smacking of the pitched leathern jack it
was poured from. Our Monday's milk por-
ridge, blue and tasteless, and the pease soup
of Saturday, coarse and choking, were en-
riched for him with a slice of "extraordi-
nary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf
of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of
millet, somewhat less repugnant (we had
three banian to four meat days in the
week), was endeared to his palate with a
lump of double-refined, and a smack of
ginger (to make it go down the more glibly)
or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our
half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled
beef on Thursdays (strong as caro equina),
with detestable marigolds floating in the
pail to poison the broth— our scanty mutton
scrags on Fridays— and rather more savory,
but grudging, portions of the same flesh,
rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the
only dish which excited our appetites, and
disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal
proportion)— he had his hot plate of roast
veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics
unknown to our palates), cooked in the
paternal kitchen (a great thing), and
brought him daily by his maid or aunt! I
30

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

remember the good old relative (in whom
love forbade pride) squatting down upon
some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters,
disclosing the viands (of higher regale than
those cates which the ravens ministered to
the Tishbite); and the contending passions
of L. at the unfolding. There was love for
the bringer; shame for the thing brought,
and the manner of its bringing; sympathy
for those who were too many to share in it;
and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, strongest
of the passions!) predominant, breaking
down the stony fences of shame, and awk-
wardness, and a troubling over-conscious-
ness.

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents,
and those who should care for me, were far
away. Those few acquaintances of theirs
which they could reckon upon as being kind
to me in the great city, after a little forced
notice, which they had the grace to take of
me on my first arrival in town, soon grew
tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to
them to recur too often, though I thought
them few enough; and, one after another,
they all failed me, and I felt myself alone
among six hundred playmates.

0 the cruelty of separating a poor lad
from his early homestead! The yearnings
which I used to have towards it in those
31

ESSAYS OP ELIA

unfledged years! How, in my dreams,
would my native town (far in the west)
come back, with its church, and trees, and
faces! How I would wake weeping, and in
the anguish of my heart exclaim upon
sweet Calne in Wiltshire!

To this late hour of my life, I trace im-
pressions left by the recollection of those
friendless holidays. The long warm days
of summer never return but they bring
with them a gloom from the haunting
memory of those whole-day leaves, when,
by some strange arrangement, we were
turned out, for the livelong day, upon our
own hands, whether we had friends to go
to, or none. I remember those bathing-
excursions to the New River, which L. re-
calls with such relish, better, I think, than
he can— for he was a home-seeking lad, and
did not much care for such water-pastimes.
—How merrily we would sally forth into the
fields; and strip under the first warmth of
the sun; and wanton like young dace in the
streams; getting us appetites for noon,
which those of us that were penniless (our
scanty morning crust long since exhausted)
had not the means of allaying— while the
cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at
feed about us, and we had nothing to satisfy
our cravings— the very beauty of the day,
32

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

and the exercise of the pastime, and the
sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon
them!— How faint and languid, finally, we
would return, towards nightfall, to our
desired morsel, half rejoicing, half reluc-
tant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty
had expired !

It was worse in the days of winter, to go
prowling about the streets objectless—
shivering at cold windows of print-shops,
to extract a little amusement; or haply, as
a last resort, in the hopes of a little novelty,
to pay a fifty-times-repeated visit (where
our individual faces should be as well known
to the warden as those of his own charges)
to the Lions in the Tower— to whose levee,
by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescrip-
tive title to admission.

L.'s governor (so we called the patron
who presented us to the foundation) lived
in a manner under his paternal roof. Any
complaint which he had to make was sure
of being attended to. This was understood
at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to
him against the severity of masters, or
worse tyranny of the monitors. The op-
pressions of these young brutes are heart-
sickening to call to recollection. I have
been called out of my bed, and waked for
the purpose, in the coldest winter nights—
2 33

ESSAYS OP ELIA

and this not once, but night after night— in
my shirt, to receive the discipline of a lea-
thern thong, with eleven other sufferers, be-
cause it pleased my callow overseer, when
there has been any talking heard after we
were gone to bed, to make the six last beds
in the dormitory, where the youngest chil-
dren of us slept, answerable for an offense
they neither dared to commit, nor had the
power to hinder.— The same execrable tyr-
anny drove the younger part of us from
the fires, when our feet were perishing with
snow; and, under the cruelest penalties,
forbade the indulgence of a drink of water,
when we lay in sleepless summer nights,
fevered with the season and the day's
sports.

There was one H , who, I learned in

after days, was seen expiating some ma-
turer offense in the hulks. (Do I flatter
myself in fancying that this might be the
planter of that name, who suffered— at
Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts— some few
years since? My friend Tobin was the
benevolent instrument of bringing him to
the gallows.) This petty Nero actually
branded a boy, who had offended him, with
a red-hot iron; and nearly starved forty of
us, with exacting contributions, to the one
half of our bread, to pamper a young ass,
34

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

which, incredible as it may seem, with the
connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young
flame of his), he had contrived to smuggle
in, and keep upon the leads of the ward, as
they called our dormitories. This game
went on for better than a week, till the
foolish beast, not able to fare well but he
must cry roast meat — happier than Calig-
ula's minion, could he have kept his own
counsel— but, foolisher, alas! than any of
his species in the fables— waxing fat, and
kicking, in the fullness of bread, one un-
lucky minute would needs proclaim his good
fortune to the world below; and, laying out
his simple throat, blew such a ram's-horn
blast, as (toppling down the walls of his
own Jericho) set concealment any longer
at defiance. The client was dismissed, with
certain attentions, to Smithfield; but I never
understood that the patron underwent any
censure on the occasion. This was in the
stewardship of L.'s admired Perry.

Under the same faeile administration, can
L. have forgotten the cool impunity with
which the nurses used to carry away openly,
in open platters, for their own tables, one
out of two of every hot joint, which the
careful matron had been seeing scrupulously
weighed out for our dinners? These things
were daily practised in that magnificent
35

ESSAYS OF ELIA

apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur
since, we presume) praises so highly for
the grand paintings " by Verrio and others,"
with which it is " hung round and adorned."
But the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat
boys in pictures was, at that time, I believe,
little consolatory to him, or us, the living
ones, who saw the better part of our pro-
visions carried away before our faces by
harpies; and ourselves reduced (with the
Trojan in the hall of Dido)

To feed our mind with idle portraiture.

L. has recorded the repugnance of the
school to gags, or the fat of fresh beef
boiled; and sets it down to some supersti-
tion. But these unctuous morsels are never
grateful to young palates (children are uni-
versally fat-haters), and in strong, coarse,
boiled meats, unsalted, are detestable. A
gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a

ghoul, and held in equal detestation.

suffered under the imputation:

. . . 'T was said
He ate strange flesh.

He was observed, after dinner, carefully
to gather up the remnants left at his table
(not many, nor very choice fragments, you
36

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

may credit me) —and, in an especial manner,
these disreputable morsels, which he would
convey away, and secretly stow in the settle
that stood at his bedside. None saw when
he ate them. It was rumored that he pri-
vately devoured them in the night. He
was watched, but no traces of such midnight
practices were discoverable. Some reported
that, on leave-days, he had been seen to
carry out of the bounds a large blue check
handkerchief full of something. This then
must be the accursed thing. Conjecture
next was at work to imagine how he could
dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the
beggars. This belief generally prevailed.
He went about moping. None spake to
him. No one would play with him. He
was excommunicated; put out of the pale
of the school. He was too powerful a boy
to be beaten, but he underwent every mode
of that negative punishment which is more
grievous than many stripes. Still he per-
severed. At length he was observed by two
of his school-fellows, who were determined
to get at the secret, and had traced him one
leave-day for that purpose, to enter a large
worn-out building, such as there exist
specimens of in Chancery Lane, which are
let out to various scales of pauperism, with
open door and a common staircase. After
37

ESSAYS OF ELIA

him they silently slunk in, and followed by
stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at
a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged
woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now
ripened into certainty. The informers had
secured their victim. They had him in
their toils. Accusation was formally pre-
ferred, and retribution most signal was
looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then steward
(for this happened a little after my time),
with that patient sagacity which tempered
all his conduct, determined to investigate
the matter, before he proceeded to sentence.
The result was, that the supposed mendi-
cants, the receivers or purchasers of the
mysterious scraps, turned out to be the

parents of , an honest couple come to

decay,— whom this seasonable supply had,
in all probability, saved from mendicancy:
and that this young stork, at the expense
of his own good name, had all this while
been only feeding the old birds!— The gov-
ernors on this occasion, much to their
honor, voted a present relief to the family

of , and presented him with a silver

medal. The lesson which the steward read
upon RASH JUDGMENT, on the occasion of
publicly delivering the medal to , I be-
lieve, would not be lost upon his auditory.
—I had left school then, but I well remem-
38

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

ber . He was a tall, shambling youth,

with a cast in his eye, not at all calculated
to conciliate hostile prejudices. I have
since seen him carrying a baker's basket.
I think I heard he did not do quite so well
by himself as he had done by the old folks.
I was a hypochondriac lad; and the sight
of a boy in fetters, upon the day of my first
putting on the blue clothes, was not exactly
fitted to assuage the natural terrors of
initiation. I was of tender years, barely
turned of seven; and had only read of such
things in books, or seen them but in dreams.
I was told he had run away. This was the
punishment for the first offense.— As a nov-
ice I was soon after taken to see the dun-
geons. These were little, square. Bedlam
cells, where a boy could just lie at his length
upon straw and a blanket— a mattress, I
think, was afterwards substituted— with a
peep of light, let in askance, from a prison
orifice at top, barely enough to read by.
Here the poor boy was locked in by himself
all day, without sight of any but the porter
who brought him his bread and water—
who might not speak to him;— or of the
beadle, who came twice a week to call him
out to receive his periodical chastisement,
which was almost welcome, because it
separated him for a brief interval from
39

ESSAYS OF ELIA

solitude:— and here he was shut up by him-
self of nights, out of the reach of any sound,
to suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves,
and superstition incident to his time of life,
might subject him to.^ This was the pen-
alty for the second offense. Wouldst thou
like. Reader, to see what became of him in
the next degree?

The culprit, who had been a third time an
offender, and whose expulsion was at this
time deemed irreversible, was brought forth,
as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in
uncouth and most appalling attire, all trace
of his late "watchet weeds" carefully
effaced; he was exposed in a jacket, re-
sembling those which London lamplighters
formerly delighted in, with a cap of the
same. The effect of this divestiture was
such as the ingenious devisers of it could
have anticipated. With his pale and
frighted features, it was as if some of those
disfigurements in Dante had seized upon
him. In this disguisement he was brought
into the hall {L.^s favorite state-room),
where awaited him the whole number of

1 One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, ac-
cordingly, at length convinced the governors of the impolicy
of this part of the sentence, and the midnight torture to the
spirits was dispensed with. — This fancy of dungeons for chil-
dren was a sprout of Howard's brain ; for which (saving the
reverence due to Holy Paul) methinks I could willingly spit
upon his statue.

40

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

his school-fellows, whose joint lessons and
sports he was thenceforth to share no
more; the awful presence of the steward,
to be seen for the last time; of the execu-
tioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the
occasion; and of two faces more, of direr
import, because never but in these extrem-
ities visible. These were governors; two
of whom, by choice, or charter, were always
accustomed to officiate at these Ultima
Supplicia; not to mitigate (so at least we
understood it), but to enforce the uttermost
stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter
Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one
occasion, when the beadle turning rather
pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to pre-
pare him for the mysteries. The scourging
was, after the old Roman fashion, long and
stately. The lictor accompanied the crimi-
nal quite round the hall. We were generally
too faint with attending to the previous
disgusting circumstances to make accurate
report with our eyes of the degree of cor-
poral suffering inflicted. Report, of course,
gave out the back knotty and livid. After
scourging, he was made over, in his San
Benito, to his friends, if he had any (but
commonly such poor runagates were friend-
less), or to his parish officer, who, to en-
hance the effect of the scene, had his station
41

ESSAYS OF ELIA

allotted to him on the outside of the hall
gate.

These solemn pageantries were not played
off so often as to spoil the general mirth of
the community. We had plenty of exercise
and recreation after school hours; and, for
myself, I must confess that I was never
happier than in them. The Upper and the
Lower Grammar Schools were held in the
same room; and an imaginary line only
divided their bounds. Their character was
as different as that of the inhabitants on
the two sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev.
James Boyer was the Upper Master, but
the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that
portion of the apartment of which I had
the good fortune to be a member. We lived
a life as careless as birds. We talked and
did just what we pleased, and nobody mo-
lested us. We carried an accidence, or a
grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it
gave us, we might take two years in getting
through the verbs deponent, and another
two in forgetting all that we had learned
about them. There was now and then the
formality of saying a lesson, but if you had
not learned it, a brush across the shoulders
(just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole
remonstrance. Field never used the rod;
and in truth he wielded the cane with no
42

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

great good will— holding it "like a dancer."
It looked in his hands rather like an emblem
than an instrument of authority; and an
emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was
a good easy man, that did not care to ruffle
his own peace, nor perhaps set any great
consideration upon the value of juvenile
time. He came among us, now and then,
but often stayed away whole days from us;
and when he came, it made no difference
to us— he had his private room to retire to,
the short time he stayed, to be out of the
sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar
went on. We had classics of our own, with-
out being beholden to "insolent Greece or
haughty Rome," that passed current among
us— Peter Wilkins— The Adventures of the
Hon. Captain Robert Boyle— the Fortunate
Blue-coat Boy— and the like. Or we culti-
vated a turn for mechanic and scientific
operations; making little sun-dials of paper;
or weaving those ingenious parentheses,
called cat-cradles; or making dry peas to
dance upon the end of a tin pipe; or study-
ing the art military over that laudable game
" French and English," and a hundred other
such devices to pass away the time— mixing
the useful with the agreeable— as would
have made the souls of Rousseau and John
Locke chuckle to have seen us.
43

ESSAYS OF ELIA

Matthew Field belonged to that class of
modest divines who affect to mix in equal
proportion the gentleman, the scholar, and
the Christian; hut, I know not how, the
first ingredient is generally found to he the
predominating dose in the composition.
He was engaged in gay parties, or with his
courtly how at some episcopal levee, when
he should have been attending upon us.
He had for many years the classical charge
of a hundred children, during the four or
five first years of their education; and his
very highest form seldoni proceeded further
than two or three of the introductory fables
of Pheedrus. How things were suffered to
go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who
was the proper person to have remedied
these abuses, always affected, perhaps felt,
a delicacy in interfering in a province not
strictly his own. I have not been without
my suspicions, that he was not altogether
displeased at the contrast we presented to
his end of the school. We were a sort of
Helots to his young Spartans. He would
sometimes, with ironic deference, send to
borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then,
with Sardonic grin, observe to one of his
upper boys, " how neat and fresh the twigs
looked." While his pale students were bat-
tering their brains over Xenophon and
44

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

Plato, with a silence as deep as that en-
joined by the Samite, we were enjoying our-
selves at our ease in our little Goshen. We
saw a little into the secrets of his discipline,
and the prospect did but the more reconcile
us to our lot. His thunders rolled innoc-
uous for us; his storms came near, but
never touched us; contrary to Gideon's
miracle, while all around were drenched,
our fleece was dry.^ His boys turned out
the better scholars; we, I suspect, have the
advantage in temper. His pupils cannot
speak of him without something of terror
allaying their gratitude; the remembrance
of Field comes back with all the soothing
images of indolence, and summer slumbers,
and work like play, and innocent idleness,
and Elysian exemptions, and life itself a
"playing holiday."

Though sufficiently removed from the
jurisdiction of Boyer, we were near enough
(as I have said) to understand a little of his
system. We occasionally heard sounds of
the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tar-
tarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English
style was crampt to barbarism. His Easter
anthems (for his duty obliged him to those
periodical flights) were grating as scrannel

Cowley.

45

ESSAYS OF ELIA

pipes.-^— He would laugh— aye, and heartily
—but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble
about Rex— or at the tristis severitas in
vultUf or inspieere in patinas, of Terence-
thin jests, which at their first broaching
could hardly have had vis enough to move
a Roman muscle.— He had two wigs, both
pedantic, but of different omen. The one
serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening
a mild day. The other, an old discolored,
unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent
and bloody execution. Woe to the school
when he made his morning appearance in
his passy, or passionate wig. No comet ex-
pounded surer.— J. B. had a heavy hand.
I have known him double his knotty fist at
a poor trembling child (the maternal milk
hardly dry upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do
you presume to set your wits at me?"—
Nothing was more common than to see him
make a headlong entry into the school-room,
from his inner recess, or library, and, with
turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out,

1 In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coad-
jutor. While the former was digging his brains for crude
anthems, worth a pignut, F. would be recreating his gentle-
manly fancy in the more flowery walks of the Muses. A little
dramatic effusion of his, under the name of Vertumnus and
Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that sort
of literature. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town did
not give it their sanction.— B. used to say of it, in a way of
half compliment, half irony, that it was too classical for repre-
sentation.

46

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

"Od's my life, sirrah" (his favorite adjura-
tion), " I have a great mind to whip you,"—
then, with as sudden a retracting impulse,
fling back into his lair— and, after a cooling
lapse of some minutes (during which all but
the culprit had totally forgotten the con-
text), drive headlong out again, piecing out
his imperfect sense, as if it had been some
Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell—
^'and I WILL f 00."— In his gentler moods,
when the rdhidus furor was assuaged, he
had resort to an ingenious method, peculiar,
for what I have heard, to himself, of whip-
ping the boy, and reading the Debates, at
the same time; a paragraph and a lash be-
tween; which in those times, when parlia-
mentary oratory was most at a height and
flourishing in these realms, was not calcu-
lated to impress the patient with a venera-
tion for the diffuser graces of rhetoric.

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was
known to fall ineffectual from his hand-
when droll squinting W having been

caught putting the inside of the master's
desk to a use for which the architect had
clearly not designed it, to justify himself,
with great simplicity averred, that he did
not know that the thing had been forewarned.
This exquisite irrecognition of any law ante-
cedent to the oral or declaratory, struck so
47

ESSAYS OP ELIA

irresistibly upon the fancy of all^who heard
it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that
remission was unavoidable.

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as
an instructor. Coleridge, in his literary
life, has pronounced a more intelligible and
ample encomium on them. The author of
the Country Spectator doubts not to com-
pare him with the ablest teachers of an-
tiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him
better than with the pious ejaculation of
C— when he heard that his old master was
on his death-bed: "Poor J. B.!— may all his
faults be forgiven; and may he be wafted to
bliss by little cherub boys, all head and
wings, with no bottoms to reproach his sub-
lunary infirmities."

Under him were many good and sound
scholars bred.— First Grecian of my time
was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys
and men, since Co-grammar-master (and

inseparable companion) with Dr. T e.

What an edifying spectacle did this brace
of friends present to those who remembered
the anti-socialities of their predecessors!—
You never met the one by chance in the
street without a wonder, which was quickly
dissipated by the almost immediate sub-
appearance of the other. Generally arm
in arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened
48

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

for each other the toilsome duties of their
profession, and when, in advanced age, one
found it convenient to retire, the other was
not long in discovering that it suited him
to lay down the fasces also. Oh, it is pleas-
ant, as it is rare, to find the same arm
linked in yours at forty which at thirteen
helped it to turn over the Cicero De Amici-
tia, or some tale of Antique Friendship,
which the young heart even then was burn-
ing to anticipate!— Co-Grecian with S. was

Th , who has since executed with ability

various diplomatic functions at the North-
ern courts. Th was a tall, dark, satur-
nine youth, sparing of speech, with raven
locks.— Thomas Fanshaw Middleton fol-
lowed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a
scholar and a gentleman in his teens. He
has the reputation of an excellent critic;
and is author (besides the Country Specta-
tor) of a Treatise on the Greek Article,
against Sharpe.— M. is said to bear his miter
high in India, where the regni novitas (I
dare say) sufficiently justifies the bearing.
A humility quite as primitive as that of
Jewel or Hooker might not be exactly fit-
ted to impress the minds of those Anglo-
Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for home
institutions, and the church which those
fathers watered. The manners of M. at
^ 49

ESSAYS OP ELIA

school, though firm, were mild and unas-
suming.—Next to M. (if not senior to him)
was Richards, author of the Aboriginal
Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford
Prize Poems; a pale, studious Grecian.—

Then followed poor S , ill-fated M !

of these the Muse is silent.

Finding some of Edward's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.

Come back into memory, like as thou
wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with
hope like a fiery column before thee— the
dark pillar not yet turned— Samuel Taylor
Coleridge— Logician, Metaphysician, Bard!
—How have I seen the casual passer
through the Cloisters stand still, entranced
with admiration (while he weighed the dis-
proportion between the speech and the garb
of the young Mirandula), to hear thee un-
fold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the
mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for
even in those years thou waxedst not pale
at such philosophic draughts), or reciting
Homer in his Greek, or Pindar — while the
walls of the old Grey Friars reechoed to the
accents of the inspired charity-boy!— Many
were the "wit-combats" (to dally awhile
with the words of old Fuller) between him
50

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

and C. V. Le G , "which two I behold

a Spanish great galleon, and an English like
man-of-war: Master Coleridge, like the
former, was built far higher in learning,
solid, but slow in his performances. C. V.
L., with the English man-of-war, lesser in
bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with
all tides, tack about, and take advantage of
all winds, by the quickness of his wit and
invention."

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly
forgotten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and
still more cordial laugh, with which thou
wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake,
in thy cognition of some poignant jest of
theirs; or the anticipation of some more
material, and peradventure practical one,
of thine own. Extinct are those smiles,
with that beautiful countenance, with which
(for thou wert the Nireus formosus of the
school), in the days of thy maturer waggery,
thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated
town-damsel, who, incensed by provoking
pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly
converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the

half-formed terrible " bl ," for a gentler

greeting— "6 ?ess thy handsome face ! "

Next follow two, who ought to be now
alive, and the friends of Elia— the junior Le

G and F ; who impelled, the former

51

ESSAYS OF ELIA

by a roving temper, the latter by too quick
a sense of neglect— ill capable of enduring
the slights poor Sizars are sometimes sub-
ject to in our seats of learning— exchanged
their Alma Mater for the camp; perishing,
one by climate, and one on the plains of

Salamanca:— Le G , sanguine, volatile,

sweet-natured; P , dogged, faithful, an-

ticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with
something of the old Roman height about
him.

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present

master of Hertford, with Marmaduke T ,

mildest of Missionaries— and both my good
friends still— close the catalogue of Grecians
in my time.

52

THE TWO RACES OF MEN

THE human species, according to the
best theory I can form of it, is com-
posed of two distinct races, the men
who borrow, and the men who lend. To
these two original diversities may be re-
duced all those impertinent classifications
of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black
men, red men. All the dwellers upon
earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elam-
ites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in
with one or other of these primary distinc-
tions. The infinite superiority of the
former, which I choose to designate as the
great raee, is discernible in their figure,
port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty.
The latter are born degraded. "He shall
serve his brethren." There is something
in the air of one of this cast, lean and sus-
picious; contrasting with the open, trusting,
generous manners of the other.

Observe who have been the greatest bor-
rowers of all ages— Alcibiades— Falstaff—
Sir Richard Steele— our late incomparable
Brinsley— what a family likeness in all four!
53

ESSAYS OF ELIA

What a careless, even deportment hath
your borrower! what rosy gills! what a
beautiful reliance on Providence doth he
manifest, — taking no more thought than
lilies! What contempt for money,— ac-
counting it (yours and mine especially) no
better than dross! What a liberal con-
founding of those pedantic distinctions of
meum and tuum ! or rather, what a noble
simplification of language (beyond Tooke),
resolving these supposed opposites into one
clear, intelligible pronoun adjective!— What
near approaches doth he make to the primi-
tive community,— to the extent of one half
of the principle at least.

He is the true taxer who " calleth all the
world up to be taxed"; and the distance is
as vast between him and one of us, as sub-
sisted between the Augustan Majesty and
the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-
pittance at Jerusalem!— His exactions, too,
have such a cheerful, voluntary air! So far
removed from your sour parochial or state
gatherers,— those inkhorn varlets, who
carry their want of welcome in their faces!
He Cometh to you with a smile, and trou-
bleth you with no receipt; confining himself
to no set season. Every day is his Candle-
mas, or his feast of Holy Michael. He ap-
plieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant look
54

THE TWO RACES OF MEN

to your purse,— which to that gentle warmth
expands her silken leaves, as naturally as
the cloak of the traveler, for which sun and
wind contended! He is the true Propontic
which never ebbeth ! The sea which taketh
handsomely at each man's hand. In vain
the victim, whom he delighteth to honor,
struggles with destiny; he is in the net.
Lend therefore cheerfully, 0 man ordained
to lend— that thou lose not in the end, with
thy worldly penny, the reversion promised.
Combine not preposterously in thine own
person the penalties of Lazarus and of
Dives!— but, when thou seest the proper
authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it
were half-way. Come, a handsome sacri-
fice! See how light he makes of it! Strain
not courtesies with a noble enemy.

Reflections like the foregoing were forced
upon my mind by the death of my old friend,
Ralph Bigod, Esq., who parted this life on
Wednesday evening; dying, as he had lived,
without much trouble. He boasted himself
a descendant from mighty ancestors of that
name, who heretofore held ducal dignities
in this realm. In his actions and senti-
ments he belied not the stock to which he
pretended. Early in life he found himself
invested with ample revenues; which, with
that noble disinterestedness which I have
55

ESSAYS OP ELIA

noticed as inherent in men of the great
race, he took almost immediate measures
entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing:
for there is something revolting in the idea
of a king holding a private purse; and the
thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus
furnished, by the very act of disfurnish-
ment; getting rid of the cumbersome lug-
gage of riches, more apt (as one sings)

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,

Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise,

he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his
great enterprise, "borrowing and to bor-
row!"

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress
throughout this island, it has been calcu-
lated that he laid a tithe part of the inhabi-
tants under contribution. I reject this
estimate as greatly exaggerated:— but hav-
ing had the honor of accompanying my
friend, divers times, in his perambulations
about this vast city, I own I was greatly
struck at first with the prodigious number
of faces we met, who claimed a sort of re-
spectful acquaintance with us. He was one
day so obliging as to explain the phenome-
non. It seems these were his tributaries;
feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen, his
56

THE TWO RACES OF MEN

good friends (as he was pleased to express
himself), to whom he had occasionally been
beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did
no way disconcert him. He rather took a
pride in numbering them; and, with Comus,
seemed pleased to be " stocked with so fair
a herd."

With such sources, it was a wonder how
he contrived to keep his treasury always
empty. He did it by force of an aphorism,
which he had often in his mouth, that
"money kept longer than three days
stinks." So he made use of it while it was
fresh. A good part he drank away (for he
was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave
away, the rest he threw away, literally toss-
ing and hurling it violently from him — as
boys do burs, or as if it had been infec-
tious,—into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes,
inscrutable cavities of the earth;— or he
would bury it (where he would never seek
it again) by a river's side under some bank,
which (he would facetiously observe) paid
no interest— but out away from him it must
go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into
the wilderness, while it was sweet. He
never missed it. The streams were peren-
nial which fed his fisc. When new supplies
became necessary, the first person that had
the felicity to fall in with him, friend or
57

ESSAYS OF ELIA

stranger, was sure to contribute to the de-
ficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable way
with him. He had a cheerful, open exte-
rior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just
touched with gray (cana fides). He antici-
pated no excuse, and found none. And,
waiving for a while my theory as to the
great race, I would put it to the most un-
theorizing reader, who may at times have
disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is
not more repugnant to the kindliness of his
nature to refuse such a one as I am describ-
ing, than to say no to a poor petitionary
rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his
mumping visnomy, tells you that he expects
nothing better; and, therefore, whose pre-
conceived notions and expectations you do
in reality so much less shock in the refusal.

When I think of this man; his fiery glow
of heart; his swell of feeling; how magnifi-
cent, how ideal he was; how great at the
midnight hour; and when I compare with
him the companions with whom I have as-
sociated since, I grudge the saving of a few
idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into
the society of lenders, and little men.

To one like Elia, whose treasures are ra-
ther cased in leather covers than closed in
iron coffers, there is a class of alienators
more formidable than that which I have
58

THE TWO RACES OP MEN

touched upon; I mean your borrowers of
books — those mutilators of collections,
spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and
creators of odd volumes. There is Com-
berbatch, matchless in his depredations!

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing
you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out—
(you are now with me in my little back
study in Bloomsbury, Reader!)— with the
huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like
the Guildhall giants, in their reformed pos-
ture, guardant of nothing) once held the
tallest of my folios. Opera Bonaventurce,
choice and massy divinity, to which its
two supporters (school divinity also, but of
a lesser caliber, — Bellarmine and Holy
Thomas), showed but as dwarfs,— itself an
Ascaipart I— that Comberbatch abstracted
upon the faith of a theory he holds, which
is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by
than to refute, namely, that "the title to
property in a book (my Bonaventure, for
instance) is in exact ratio to the claimant's
powers of understanding and appreciating
the same." Should he go on acting upon
this theory, which of our shelves is safe?

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case

—two shelves from the ceiling— scarcely

distinguishable but by the quick eye of a

loser— was whilom the commodious resting-

59

ESSAYS OP ELIA

place of Browne on Urn Burial. C. will
hardly allege that he knows more about
that treatise than I do, who introduced it to
him, and was indeed the first (of the mod-
erns) to discover its beauties— but so have
I known a foolish lover to praise his mis-
tress in the presence of a rival more quali-
fied to carry her off than himself.— Just be-
low, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth
volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The
remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's
refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed
Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Mel-
ancholy, in sober state.— There loitered the
Complete Angler; quiet as in life, by some
stream-side. In yonder nook, John Buncle,
a widower-volume, with "eyes closed,"
mourns his ravished mate.

One justice I must do my friend, that if
he sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away
a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he
throws up as rich an equivalent to match
it. I have a small under-collection of this
nature (my friend's gatherings in his vari-
ous calls), picked up, he has forgotten at
what odd places, and deposited with as
little memory at mine. I take in these
orphans, the twice-deserted. These prose-
lytes of the gate are welcome as the true
Hebrews. There they stand in conjunction j
60

THE TWO RACES OP MEN

natives and naturalized. The latter seem
as little disposed to inquire out their true
lineage as I am.— I charge no warehouse-
room for these deodands, nor shall ever put
myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of ad-
vertising a sale of them to pay expenses.

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense
and meaning in it. You are sure that he
will make one hearty meal on your viands, if
he can give no account of the platter after
it. But what moved thee, wayward, spite-
ful K., to be so importunate to carry off with
thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to
thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely
woman, the thrice noble Margaret New-
castle—knowing at the time, and knowing
that I knew also, thou most assuredly
wouldst never turn over one leaf of the il-
lustrious folio:— what but the mere spirit
of contradiction, and childish love of get-
ting the better of thy friend?— Then, worst
cut of all! to transport it with thee to the
Gallican land—

Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her
sex's wonder !

— hadst thou not thy play-books, and books

of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep

61

ESSAYS OP ELIA

thee merry, even as thou keepest all com-
panies with thy quips and mirthful tales?
Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly
done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-
French, better-part-English woman!— that
she could fix upon no other treatise to bear
away, in kindly token of remembering us,
than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord
Brooke— of which no Frenchman, nor wo-
man of France, Italy, or England, was ever
by nature constituted to comprehend a
tittle! Was there not Zimmermann on
Solitude ?

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a
moderate collection, be shy of showing it;
or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them,
lend thy books; but let it be to such a one
as S. T. C— he will return them (generally
anticipating the time appointed) with usury;
enriched with annotations, tripling their
value. I have had experience. Many are
these precious MSS.of his— (in matter often-
times, and almost in quantity not unfre-
quently, vying with the originals) in no
very clerkly hand— legible in my Daniel; in
old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and
those abstruser cogitations of the Greville,
now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands.— I
counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy
library, against S. T. C.
62

NEW YEAR'S EVE

EVERY man hath two birthdays: two
days at least, in every year, which
set him upon revolving the lapse of
time, as it affects his mortal duration. The
one is that which in an especial manner he
termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of
old observances, this custom of solemnizing
our proper birthday hath nearly passed
away, or is left to children, who reflect no-
thing at all about the matter, nor under-
stand anything in it beyond cake and
orange. But the birth of a New Year is of
an interest too wide to be pretermitted by
king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the
First of January with indifference. It is
that from which all date their time, and
count upon what is left. It is the nativity
of our common Adam.

Of all sound of all bells— (bells, the music
nighest bordering upon heaven)— most sol-
emn and touching is the peal which rings
out the Old Year. I never hear it without
a gathering-up of my mind to a concentra-
tion of all the images that have been dif-
63

ESSAYS OF ELIA

fused over the past twelvemonth; all I have
done or suffered, performed or neglected—
in that regretted time. I begin to know its
worth, as when a person dies. It takes a
personal color; nor was it a poetical flight
in a contemporary, when he exclaimed,

I saw the skirts of the departing Year.

It is no more than what in sober sadness
every one of us seems to be conscious of, in
that awful leave-taking. I am sure I felt
it, and all felt it with me, last night; though
some of my companions affected rather to
manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the
coming year, than any very tender regrets
for the decease of its predecessor. But I
am none of those who—

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novel-
ties; new books, new faces, new years,—
from some mental twist which makes it
difficult in me to face the prospective. I
have almost ceased to hope; and am san-
guine only in the prospects of other (former)
years. I plunge into foregone visions and
conclusions. I encounter pell-mell with
past disappointments. I am armor-proof
64

NEW YEAR'S EVE

against old discouragements. I forgive, or
overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play
over again /or love, as the gamesters phrase
it, games for which I once paid so dear. I
would scarce now have any of those unto-
ward accidents and events of my life re-
versed. I would no more alter them than
the incidents of some well-contrived novel.
Methinks, it is better that I should have
pined away seven of my goldenest years,
when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer
eyes, of Alice W n, than that so passion-
ate a love-adventure should be lost. It was
better that our family should have missed
that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us
of, than that I should have at this moment
two thousand pounds in banco, and be with-
out the idea of that specious old rogue.

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my
infirmity to look back upon those early days.
Do I advance a paradox when I say, that,
skipping over the intervention of forty
years, a man may have leave to love him-
self without the imputation of self-love?

If I know aught of myself, no one whose
mind is introspective— and mine is pain-
fully so— can have a less respect for his
present identity than I have for the man
Elia. I know him to be light, and vain, and
humorsome; a notorious * * *; addicted
? 65

ESSAYS OF ELIA

to * * *; averse from counsel, neither tak-
ing it, nor offering it;—* * * besides; a
stammering buffoon; what you will; lay it
on, and spare not; I subscribe to it all, and
much more, than thou canst be willing to
lay at his door— but for the child Elia—
that "other me," there, in the background
—I must take leave to cherish the remem-
brance of that young master— with as little
reference, I protest, to his stupid change-
ling of five and forty, as if it had been a
child of some other house, and not of my
parents. I can cry over its patient small-
pox at five, and rougher medicaments. I
can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick
pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in sur-
prise at the gentle posture of maternal ten-
derness hanging over it, that unknown had
watched its sleep. I know how it shrank
from any the least color of falsehood.— God
help thee, Elia, how art thou changed!—
Thou art sophisticated.— I know how hon-
est, how courageous (for a weakling) it was
—how religious, how imaginative, how
hopeful! From what have I not fallen, if
the child I remember was indeed myself,
—and not some dissembling guardian, pre-
senting a false identity, to give the rule to
my unpractised steps, and regulate the tone
of my moral being!

66

NEW YEAR'S EVE

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a
hope of sympathy, in such retrospection,
may be the symptom of some sickly idio-
syncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause:
simply, that being without wife or family,
I have not learned to project myself enough
out of myself; and having no offspring of
my own to dally with, I turn back upon
memory, and adopt my own early idea, as
my heir and favorite? If these speculations
seem fantastical to thee. Reader— (a busy
man, perchance), if I tread out of the way
of thy sympathy, and am singularly con-
ceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridi-
cule, under the phantom cloud of Elia.

The elders, with whom I was brought up,
were of a character not likely to let slip the
sacred observance of any old institution;
and the ringing out of the Old Year was
kept by them with circumstances of peculiar
ceremony.— In those days the sound of
those midnight chimes, though it seemed
to raise hilarity in all around me, never
failed to bring a train of pensive imagery
into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived
what it meant, or thought of it as a reck-
oning that concerned me. Not childhood
alone, but the young man till thirty, never
feels practically that he is mortal. He
knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could
67

ESSAYS OF ELIA

preach a homily on the fragility of life; but
he brings it not home to himself, any more
than in a hot June we can appropriate to
our imagination the freezing days of Decem-
ber. But now, shall I confess a truth?— I
feel these audits but too powerfully. I be-
gin to count the probabilities of my dura-
tion, and to grudge at the expenditure of
moments and shortest periods, like misers'
farthings. In proportion as the years both
lessen and shorten, I set more count upon
their periods, and would fain lay my inef-
fectual finger upon the spoke of the great
wheel. I am not content to pass away " like
a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors sol-
ace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable
draught of mortality. I care not to be car-
ried with the tide, that smoothly bears
human life to eternity; and reluct at the
inevitable course of destiny. I am in love
with this green earth, the face of town and
country, the unspeakable rural solitudes,
and the sweet security of streets. I would
set up my tabernacle here. I am content
to stand still at the age to which I am ar-
rived; I, and my friends: to be no younger,
no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to
be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow
fruit, as they say, into the grave.— Any
alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or
68

NEW YEAR'S EVE

in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me.
My household gods plant a terrible fixed
foot, and are not rooted up without blood.
They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores.
A new state of being staggers me.

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary
walks, and summer holidays, and the green-
ness of fields, and the delicious juices of
meats and fishes, and society, and the cheer-
ful glass, and candle-light, and fireside con-
versations, and innocent vanities, and jests,
and irony itself— do these things go out
with life?

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt
sides, when you are pleasant with him?

And you, my midnight darlings, my
Folios; must I part with the intense delight
of having you (huge armfuls) in my em-
braces? Must knowledge come to me, if it
come at all, by some awkward experiment
of intuition, and no longer by this familiar
process of reading?

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting
the smiling indications which point me to
them here,— the recognizable face— the
"sweet assurance of a look"?

In winter this intolerable disinclination to

dying— to give it its mildest name— does

more especially haunt and beset me. In a

genial August noon, beneath a sweltering

69

ESSAYS OF ELIA

sky, death is almost problematic. At those
times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy
an immortality. Then we expand and bur-
geon. Then are we as strong again, as val-
iant again, as wise again, and a great deal
taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me,
puts me in thoughts of death. All things
allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that
master feeling; cold, numbness, dreams,
perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shad-
owy and spectral appearances,— that cold
ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister,
like that innutritions one denounced in the
Canticles:— I am none of her minions— I
hold with the Persian.

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of
my way, brings death unto my mind. All
partial evils, like humors, run into that
capital plague-sore.— I have heard some
profess an indifference to life. Such hail
the end of their existence as a port of refuge;
and speak of the grave as of some soft
arms, in which they may slumber as on a
pillow. Some have wooed death— but out
upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phantom!
I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar
John) give thee to sixscore thousand devils,
as in no instance to be excused or tolerated,
but shunned as an universal viper; to be
branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of! In
70

NEW YEAR'S EVE

no way can I be brought to digest thee,
thou thin, melancholy Privation, or more
frightful and confounding Positive!

Those antidotes, prescribed against the
fear of thee, are altogether frigid and in-
sulting, like thyself. For what satisfaction
hath a man, that he shall "lie down with
kings and emperors in death," who in his
lifetime never greatly coveted the society
of such bedfellows?— or, forsooth, that "so
shall the fairest face appear"?— why, to
comfort me, must Alice W— — n be a goblin?
More than all, I conceive disgust at those
impertinent and misbecoming familiarities,
inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones.
Every dead man must take upon himself to
be lecturing me with his odious truism,
that " Such as he now is I must shortly be."
Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou
imaginest. In the meantime I am alive.
I move about. I am worth twenty of thee.
Know thy betters! Thy New Years' days
are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for
1821. Another cup of wine— and while that
turncoat bell, that just now mournfully
chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with
changed notes lustily rings in a successor,
let us attune to its peal the song made on
a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr.
Cotton,

71

ESSAYS OP ELIA

THE NEW YEAR

Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star

Tells us, the day himself 's not far ;

And see where, breaking from the night,

He gilds the western hills with light.

With him old Janus doth appear.

Peeping into the future year,

With such a look as seems to say

The prospect is not good that way.

Thus do we rise ill sights to see.

And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy ;

When the prophetic fear of things

A more tormenting mischief brings,

More full of soul-tormenting gall

Than direst mischiefs can befall.

But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight,

Better inform' d by clearer light.

Discerns sereneness in that brow

That all contracted seemed but now.

His revers'd face may show distaste,

And frown upon the ills are past ;

But that which this way looks is clear,

And smiles upon the New-born Year.

He looks too from a place so high.

The year lies open to his eye ;

And all the moments open are

To the exact discoverer.

Yet more and more he smiles upon

The happy revolution.

Why should we then suspect or fear

The influences of a year.

So smiles upon us the first morn.

And speaks us good so soon as born ?

72

NEW YEAR'S EVE

Plague on 't ! the last was ill enough,

This cannot but make better proof;

Or, at the worst, as we brush' d through

The last, why so we may this too ;

And then the next in reason shou'd

Be superexcellently good :

For the worst ills (we daily see)

Have no more perpetuity

Than the best fortunes that do fall ;

Which also bring us wherewithal

Longer their being to support,

Than those do of the other sort :

And who has one good year in three,

And yet repines at destiny,

Appears ungrateful in the case,

And merits not the good he has.

Then let us welcome the New Guest

With lusty brimmers of the best :

Mirth always should Grood Fortune meet,

And renders e'en Disaster sweet :

And though the Princess turn her back,

Let us but line ourselves with sack.

We better shall by far hold out,

Till the next year she face about.

How say you, Reader— do not these verses
smack of the rough magnanimity of the old
EngHsh vein? Do they not fortify like a
cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive
of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the
concoction? Where be those puling fears
of death, just now expressed or affected?—
Passed like a cloud— absorbed in the purg-
ing sunlight of clear poetry— clean washed

73

ESSAYS OF ELIA

away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your
only Spa for these hypochondries.— And
now another cup of the generous! and a
merry New Year, and many of them to you
all, my masters!

74

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

" A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the
/\ rigor of the game." This was the
JL \^ celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle
(now with God), who, next to her devotions,
loved a good game of whist. She was none
of your lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-
half players, who have no objection to take
a hand, if you want one to make up a rub-
ber; who affirm that they have no pleasure
in winning; that they like to win one game
and lose another; that they can while away
an hour very agreeably at a card-table, but
are indifferent whether they play or no; and
will desire an adversary, who has slipped a
wrong card, to take it up and play another.
These insufferable trifiers are the curse of
a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole
pot. Of such it may be said that they do
not play at cards, but only play at playing
at them.

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She

detested them, as I do, from her heart and

soul, and would not, save upon a striking

emergency, willingly seat herself at the

75

ESSAYS OF ELIA

same table with them. She loved a thor-
ough-paced partner, a determined enemy.
She took, and gave, no concessions. She
hated ;favors. She never made a revoke,
nor ever passed it over in her adversary
without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She
fought a good fight: cut and thrust. She
held not her good sword (her cards) " like a
dancer." She sate bolt upright; and neither
showed you her cards, nor desired to see
yours. All people have their blind side—
their superstitions; and I have heard her
declare, under the rose, that Hearts was
her favorite suit.

I never in my life— and I knew Sarah
Battle many of the best years of it— saw
her take out her snuff-box when it was her
turn to play; or snuff a candle in the mid-
dle of a game; or ring for a servant, till it
was fairly over. She never introduced, or
connived at, miscellaneous conversation
during its process. As she emphatically
observed, cards were cards; and if I ever
saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-
century countenance, it was at the airs of
a young gentleman of a literary turn, who
had been with difficulty persuaded to take
a hand; and who, in his excess of candor,
declared that he thought there was no
harm in unbending the mind now and then,
76

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

after serious studies, in recreations of that
kind ! She could not bear to have her nohle
occupation, to which she wound up her
faculties, considered in that light. It was
her business, her duty, the thing she came
into the world to do,— and she did it. She
unbent her mind afterwards— over a book.

Pope was her favorite author: his Rape
of the Lock her favorite work. She once
did me the favor to play over with me (with
the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in
that poem; and to explain to me how far it
agreed with, and in what points it would be
found to differ from, tradrille. Her illus-
trations were apposite and poignant; and I
had the pleasure of sending the substance
of them to Mr. Bowles; but I suppose they
came too late to be inserted among his in-
genious notes upon that author.

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her
first love; but whist had engaged her ma-
turer esteem. The former, she said, was
showy and specious, and likely to allure
young persons. The uncertainty and quick
shifting of partners— a thing which the
constancy of whist abhors;— the dazzling
supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille
—absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure
aristocracy of whist, where his crown and
garter give him no proper power above his
77

ESSAYS OF ELIA

brother-nobility of the Aces;— the giddy-
vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of
playing along; above all, the overpowering
attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole,— to the
triumph of which there is certainly no-
thing parallel or approaching, in the con-
tingencies of whist;— all these, she would
say, make quadrille a game of captivation
to the young and enthusiastic. But whist
was the solider game: that was her word.
It was a long meal; not like quadrille, a
feast of snatches. One or two rubbers
might co-extend in duration with an even-
ing. They gave time to form rooted friend-
ships, to cultivate steady enmities. She
despised the chance-started, capricious, and
ever-fluctuating alliances of the other.
The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say,
reminded her of the petty ephemeral em-
broilments of the little Italian states, de-
picted by Machiavel: perpetually changing
postures and connections; bitter foes to-
day, sugared darlings to-morrow; kissing
and scratching in a breath;— but the wars
of whist were comparable to the long, steady,
deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the
great French and English nations.

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly
admired in her favorite game. There was
nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage
78

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

—nothing superfluous. No flushes— that
most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable
being can set up:— that any one should
claim four by virtue of holding cards of the
same mark and color, without reference to
the playing of the game, or the individual
worth or pretensions of the cards them-
selves. She held this to be a solecism; as
pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration
is in authorship. She despised superfici-
ality, and looked deeper than the colors of
things.— Suits were soldiers, she would say,
and must have a uniformity of array to dis-
tinguish them: but what should we say to
a foolish squire, who should claim a merit
from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets,
that never were to be marshaled— never to
take the field?— She even wished that whist
were more simple than it is; and, in my
mind, would have stripped it of some ap-
pendages, which, in the state of human
frailty, may be venially, and even commend-
ably, allowed of. She saw no reason for
the deciding of the trump by the turn of the
card. Why not one suit always trumps?—
Why two colors, when the mark of the suits
would have sufficiently distinguished them
without it?

" But the eye, my dear madam, is agree-
ably refreshed with the variety. Man is
79

ESSAYS OP ELIA

not a creature of pure reason— he must
have his senses delightfully appealed to.
We see it in Roman Catholic countries,
where the music and the paintings draw in
many to worship, whom your Quaker spirit
of unsensualizing would have kept out.—
You yourself have a pretty collection of
paintings— but confess to me, whether,
walking in your gallery at Sandham, among
those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul
Potters in the anteroom, you ever felt
your bosom glow with an elegant delight,
at all comparable to that you have it in
your power to experience most evenings
over a well-arranged assortment of the
court-cards?— the pretty antic habits, like
heralds in a procession— the gay triumph-
assuring scarlets— the contrasting deadly-
killing sables— the ' hoary majesty of spades'
— Pam in all his glory!—

"All these might be dispensed with; and
with their naked names upon the drab
pasteboard, the game might go on very well,
pictureless; but the beauty of cards would
be extinguished forever. Stripped of all
that is imaginative in them, they must
degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine
a dull deal board, or drumhead, to spread
them on, instead of that nice verdant car-
pet (next to nature's), fittest arena for those
80

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

courtly combatants to play their gallant
justs and tourneys in!— Exchange those
delicately turned ivory markers— (work of
Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol,
—or as profanely slighting their true appli-
cation as the arrantest Ephesian journey-
man that turned out those little shrines for
the goddess)— exchange them for little bits
of leather (our ancestors' money), or chalk
and a slate!"—

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the
soundness of my logic; and to her approba-
tion of my arguments on her favorite topic
that evening I have always fancied myself
indebted for the legacy of a curious crib-
bage-board, made of the finest Sienna mar-
ble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter
Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated)
brought with him from Florence:— this,
and a trifle of five hundred pounds, came to
me at her death.

The former bequest (which I do not least
value) I have kept with religious care;
though she herself, to confess a truth, was
never greatly taken with cribbage. It was
an essentially vulgar game, I have heard
her say,— disputing with her uncle, who
was very partial to it. She could never
heartily bring her mouth to pronounce " Go,''^
—or " That 's a go." She called it an un-
^ 81

ESSAYS OP ELIA

grammatical game. The pegging teased
her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a
five-dollar stake) because she would not take
advantage of the turn-up knave, which
would have given it her, but which she
must have claimed by the disgraceful ten-
ure of declaring " two for his heels" There
is something extremely genteel in this sort
of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentle-
woman born.

Piquet she held the best game at the
cards for two persons, though she would
ridicule the pedantry of the terms— such as
pique— repique— the capot— they savored
(she thought) of affectation. But games
for two, or even three, she never greatly
cared for. She loved the quadrate, or
square. She would argue thus:— Cards are
warfare: the ends are gain, with glory.
But cards are war, in disguise of a sport:
when single adversaries encounter, the
ends proposed are too palpable. By them-
selves, it is too close a fight; with specta-
tors it is not much bettered. No looker-on
can be interested, except for a bet, and then
it is a mere affair of money; he cares not
for your luck sympathetically, or for your
play.— Three are still worse; a mere naked
war of every man against every man, as in
cribbage, without league or alliance; or a
82

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

rotation of petty and contradictory inter-
ests, a succession of heartless leagues, and
not much more hearty infractions of them,
as in tradrille.— But in square games (she
meant whist), all that is possible to be at-
tained in card-playing is accomplished.
There are the incentives of profit with
honor, common to every species— though
the latter can be but very imperfectly en-
joyed in those other games, where the spec-
tator is only feebly a participator. But the
parties in whist are spectators and princi-
pals too. They are a theater to themselves,
and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather
worse than nothing, and an impertinence.
Whist abhors neutrality, or interests beyond
its sphere. You glory in some surprising
stroke of skill or fortune, not because a
cold— or even an interested— bystander
witnesses it, but because your partner sym-
pathizes in the contingency. You win for
two. You triumph for two. Two are ex-
alted. Two again are mortified; which
divides their disgrace, as the conjunction
doubles (by taking off the invidiousness)
your glories. Two losing to two are better
reconciled, than one to one in that close
butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened
by multiplying the channels. War becomes
a civil game.— By such reasonings as these
83

ESSAYS OF ELIA

the old lady was accustomed to defend her
favorite pastime.

No inducement could ever prevail upon
her to play at any game, where chance en-
tered into the composition, for nothing.
Chance, she would argue— and here again,
admire the subtlety of her conclusion;—
chance is nothing, but where something
else depends upon it. It is obvious that
cannot be glory. What rational cause of
exultation could it give to a man to turn up
size ace a hundred times together by him-
self? or before spectators, where no stake
was depending?— Make a lottery of a hun-
dred thousand tickets with but one fortu-
nate number— and what possible principle
of our nature, except stupid wonderment,
could it gratify to gain that number as
many times successively without a prize?
Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance
in backgammon, where it was not played for
money. She called it foolish, and those
people idiots, who were taken with a lucky
hit under such circumstances. Games of
pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played
for a stake, they were a mere system of
overreaching. Played for glory, they were
a mere setting of one man's wit,— his mem-
ory, or combination-faculty rather— against
another's; like a mock-engagement at a
84

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

review, bloodless and profitless. She could
not conceive a game wanting the spritely
infusion of chance, the handsome excuses
of good fortune. Two people playing at
chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist
was stirring in the center, would inspire
her with insufferable horror and ennui.
Those well-cut similitudes of Castles and
Knights, the imagery of the board, she
would argue (and I think in this case justly),
were entirely misplaced and senseless.
Those hard-head contests can in no instance
ally with the fancy. They reject form and
color. A pencil and dry slate (she used to
say) were the proper arena for such com-
batants.

To those puny objectors against cards, as
nurturing the bad passions, she would re-
tort, that man is a gaming animal; he must
be always trying to get the better in some-
thing or other:— that this passion can
scarcely be more safely expended than upon
a game at cards: that cards are a temporary
illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do
but play at being mightily concerned, where
a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during
the illusion, we are as mightily concerned
as those whose stake is crowns and king-
doms. They are a sort of dream-fighting;
much ado; great battling, and little blood-
85

ESSAYS OF ELIA

shed; mighty means for disproportioned
ends: quite as diverting, and a great deal
more innoxious, than many of those more
serious games of life, which men play with-
out esteeming them to be such.—

With great deference to the old lady's
judgment in these matters, I think I have
experienced some moments in my life when
playing at cards for nothing has even been
agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not
in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the
cards, and play a game at piquet for love
with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia.

I grant there is something sneaking in
it; but with a toothache, or a sprained
ankle,— when you are subdued and humble,
—you are glad to put up with an inferior
spring of action.

There is such a thing in nature, I am con-
vinced, as sick whist.

I grant it is not the highest style of man
—I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle—
she lives not, alas! to whom I should apolo-
gize.

At such times, those terms which my old
friend objected to, come in as something
admissible— I love to get a tierce or a qua-
torze, though they mean nothing. I am
subdued to an inferior interest. Those
shadows of winning amuse me.
86

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

That last game I had with my sweet
cousin (I capotted her)— (dare I tell thee
how foolish I am?)— I wished it might have
lasted forever, though we gained nothing
and lost nothing, though it was a mere
shade of play: I would be content to go on
in that idle folly forever. The pipkin should
he ever boiling, that was to prepare the
gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget
was doomed to apply after the game was
over: and, as I do not much relish appli-
ances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget
and I should be ever playing.

87

A CHAPTER ON EARS

I HAVE no ear.—
Mistake me not, reader— nor imagine
that I am by nature destitute of those
exterior twin appendages, hanging orna-
ments, and (architecturally speaking) hand-
some volutes to the human capital. Better
my mother had never borne me.— I am, I
think, rather delicately than copiously pro-
vided with those conduits; and I feel no
disposition to envy the mule for his plenty,
or the mole for her exactness, in those in-
genious labyrinthine inlets— those indis-
pensable side-intelligencers.

Neither have I incurred, or done anything
to incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigure-
ment which constrained him to draw upon
assurance— to feel "quite unabashed " and
at ease upon that article. I was never, I
thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I read
them aright, is it within the compass of my
destiny that I ever should be.

When therefore I say that I have no ear,
you will understand me to mean— /or music.
To say that this heart never melted at the

A CHAPTER ON EARS

concord of sweet sounds, would be a foul
self-libel. " Water parted from the sea "
never fails to move it strangely. So does
"In infancy." But they were used to be
sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned
instrument in vogue in those days) by a
gentlewoman— the gentlest, sure, that ever
merited the appellation — the sweetest — why

should I hesitate to name Mrs. S , once

the blooming Fanny Weatheral of the Tem-
ple—who had power to thrill the soul of Eiia,
small imp as he was, even in his long coats;
and to make him glow, tremble, and blush
with a passion that not faintly indicated
the dayspring of that absorbing sentiment
which was afterwards destined to over-
whelm and subdue his nature quite for
Alice W n.

I even think that sentimentally I am dis-
posed to harmony. But organically I am
incapable of a tune. I have been practising
" God save the King " all my life; whistling
and humming of it over to myself in soli-
tary corners; and am not yet arrived, they
tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet
hath the. loyalty of Elia never been im-
peached.

I am not without suspicion that I have
an undeveloped faculty of music within me.
For thrumming, in my wild way, on my
89

ESSAYS OF ELIA

friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while
he was engaged in an adjoining parlor,— on
his return he was pleased to say, " he thought
it could not he the maid ! " On his first sur-
prise at hearing the keys touched in some-
what an airy and masterful way, not
dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted
on Jenny. But a grace, snatched from a
superior refinement, soon convinced him
that some heing— technically perhaps de-
ficient, hut higher informed from a prin-
ciple common to all the fine arts— had
swayed the keys to a mood which Jenny,
with all her (less cultivated) enthusiasm,
could never have elicited from them. I
mention this as a proof of my friend's
penetration, and not with any view of dis-
paraging Jenny.

Scientifically I could never he made to
understand (yet have I taken some pains)
what a note of music is; or how one note
should differ from another. Much less in
voices can I distinguish a soprano from a
tenor. Only sometimes the thorough-bass
I contrive to guess at, from its being super-
eminently harsh and disagreeable. I trem-
ble, however, for my misapplication of the
simplest terms of that which I disclaim.
While I profess my ignorance, I scarce
know what to say I am ignorant of. I hate,
90

A CHAPTER ON EARS

perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and
adagio stand in the Hke relation of obscurity
to me; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring
as Baralipton.

It is hard to stand alone in an age like
this,— (constituted to the quick and critical
perception of all harmonious combinations,
I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages,
since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut,)— to
remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to
the magic influences of an art which is said
to have such an especial stroke at soothing,
elevating, and refining the passions.— Yet,
rather than break the candid current of my
confessions, I must avow to you that I have
received a great deal more pain than plea-
sure from this so cried-up faculty.

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises.
A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer
noon, will fret me into more than mid-
summer madness. But those unconnected,
unset sounds, are nothing to the measured
malice of music. The ear is passive to those
single strokes; willingly enduring stripes
while it hath no task to con. To music it
cannot be passive. It will strive— mine at
least will— 'spite of its inaptitude, to thrid
the maze; like an unskilled eye painfully
poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat
through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain,
91

ESSAYS OP ELIA

and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out
into the noisiest places of the crowded
streets, to solace myself with sounds, which
I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of
the distracting torment of endless, fruitless,
barren attention! I take refuge in the un-
pretending assemblage of honest common-
life sounds;— and the purgatory of the
Enraged Musician becomes my paradise.

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profana-
tion of the purposes of the cheerful play-
house) watching the faces of the auditory
in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's
Laughing Audience!) immovable, or affect-
ing some faint emotion— till (as some have
said, that our occupations in the next world
will be but a shadow of what delighted us
in this) I have imagined myself in some
cold Theater in Hades, where some of the
forms of the earthly one should be kept up,
with none of the enjoyment ; or like that

—Party in a parlor
All silent and all damned.

Above all, those insufferable concertos,
and pieces of music, as they are called, do
plague and embitter my apprehension.—
Words are something; but to be exposed to
an endless battery of mere sounds; to be
92

A CHAPTER ON EARS

long a-dying; to lie stretched upon a rack
of roses; to keep up languor by uninter-
mitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and
sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedi-
ous sweetness; to fill up sound with feel-
ing, and strain ideas to keep pace with it;
to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to
make the pictures for yourself; to read a
book, all stops, and be obliged to supply the
verbal matter; to invent extempore trage-
dies to answer to the vague gestures of an
inexplicable rambling mime— these are faint
shadows of what I have undergone from a
series of the ablest-executed pieces of this
empty instrumental music.

I deny not, that in the opening of a con-
cert, I have experienced something vastly
lulling and agreeable:— afterwards follow-
eth the languor and the oppression.— Like
that disappointing book in Patmos; or, like
the comings on of melancholy, described by
Burton, doth music make her first insinu-
ating approaches:— "Most pleasant it is to
such as are melancholy given, to walk alone
in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and
water, by some brookside, and to meditate
upon some delightsome and pleasant sub-
ject, which shall affect him most, amdbilis
insania, and mentis gratissimus error. A
most incomparable delight to build castles
93

ESSAYS OF ELIA

in the air, to go smiling to themselves, act-
ing an infinite variety of parts, which they
suppose, and strongly imagine, they act, or
that they see done.— So delightsome these
toys at first, they could spend whole days
and nights without sleep, even whole years
in such contemplations, and fantastica,
meditations, which are like so many dreams,
and will hardly he drawn from them— wind-
ing and unwinding themselves as so many
clocks, and still pleasing their humors, until
at the last the scene TURNS upon a sudden,
and they heing now habitated to such medi-
tations and solitary places, can endure no
company, can think of nothing but harsh
and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow,
suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent,
cares, and weariness of life, surprise them
on a sudden, and they can think of nothing
else: continually suspecting, no sooner are
their eyes open, but this infernal plague of
melancholy seizeth on them, and terrifies
their souls, representing some dismal object
to their minds; which now, by no means, no
labor, no persuasions, they can avoid, they
cannot be rid of, they cannot resist."

Something like this "SCENE TURNING"
I have experienced at the evening parties
at the house of my good Catholic friend

Nov ; who, by the aid of a capital organ,

94

A CHAPTER ON EARS

himself the most finished of players, con-
verts his drawing-room into a chapel, his
week-days into Sundays, and these latter
into minor heavens.^

When my friend commences upon one of
those solemn anthems, which peradventure
struck upon my heedless ear, rambling in
the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five
and thirty years since, waking a new sense,
and putting a soul of old religion into my
young apprehension— (whether it be that
in which the Psalmist, weary of the perse-
cutions of bad men, wisheth to himself
dove's wings— or that other which, with a
like measure of sobriety and pathos, in-
quireth by what means the young man shall
best cleanse his mind)— a holy calm per-
vadeth me.— I am for the time

—rapt above earth,
And possess joys not promised at my birtli.

But when this master of the spell, not
content to have laid a soul prostrate, goes
on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than
lies in her capacity to receive— impatient
to overcome her " earthly " with his " hea-
venly,"^ still pouring in, for protracted
hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea

1 I have been there, and still would go —
'T is like a little heaven below.— Db. Watts.

95

ESSAYS OP ELIA

of sound, or from that inexhausted German
ocean, above which, in triumphant progress,
dolphin-seated, ride those Arions Haydn
and Mozart, with their attendant Tritons,
BachfBeethoven, and a countless tribe, whom
to attempt to reckon up would but plunge
me again in the deeps,— I stagger under the
weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at my
wits' end;— clouds, as of frankincense, op-
press me— priests, altars, censers, dazzle
before me— the genius of his religion hath
me in her toils— a shadowy triple tiara in-
vests the brow of my friend, late so naked,
so ingenuous— he is Pope,— and by him sits,
like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-
Pope too,— tricoronated like himself!— I
am converted, and yet a Protestant;— at
once malleus hereticorum, and myself grand
heresiarch: or three heresies center in my
person:— I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerin-
thus— Gog and Magog— what not?— till the
coming in of the friendly supper-tray dis-
sipates the figment, and a draught of true
Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend
shows himself no bigot) at once reconciles
me to the rationalities of a purer faith; and
restores to me the genuine unterrifying
aspects of my pleasant-countenanced host
and hostess.

96

ALL FOOLS' DAY

THE compliments of the season to my
worthy masters, and a merry first of
April to us all!
Many happy returns of this day to you—
and you— and you, Sir— nay, never frown,
man, nor put a long face upon the matter.
Do not we know one another? what need of
ceremony among friends? we have all a
touch of that same— you understand me— a
speck of the motley. Beshrew the man
who on such a day as this, tYie general festi-
val, should affect to stand aloof. I am none
of those sneakers. I am free of the cor-
poration, and care not who knows it. He
that meets me in the forest to-day, shall
meet with no wiseacre, I can tell him.
Stultus sum. Translate me that, and take
the meaning of it to yourself for your pains.
What! man, we have four quarters of the
globe on our side, at the least computation.
Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry
—we will drink no wise, melancholy, politic
port on this day— and let us troll the catch
' 97

ESSAYS OP ELIA

of Amiens— due ad me— due ad me— how
goes it?

Here shall lie see

Gross fools as he.

Now would I give a trifle to know, his-
torically and authentically, who was the
greatest fool that ever lived. I would cer-
tainly give him in a bumper. Marry, of the
present breed, I think I could without much
difficulty name you the party.

Remove your cap a little further, if you
please: it hides my bauble. And now each
man bestride his hobby, and dust away his
bells to what tune he pleases. I will give
you, for my part,

—The crazy old church clock,
And the bewildered chimes.

Good master Empedocles, you are wel-
come. It is long since you went a salaman-
der-gathering down ^tna. Worse than
samphire-picking by some odds. 'T is a
mercy your worship did not singe your
mustachios.

Ha! Cleombrotus! and what salads in
faith did you light upon at the bottom of
the Mediterranean? You were founder, I
take it, of the disinterested sect of the
Calenturists.

98

ALL FOOLS' DAY

Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of
plasterers at Babel, bring in your trowel,
most Ancient Grand! You have claim to
a seat here at my right hand, as patron of
the stammerers. You left your work, if I
remember Herodotus correctly, at eight
hundred million toises, or thereabout, above
the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long
bell you must have pulled, to call your top
workmen to their nuncheon on the low
grounds of Shinar. Or did you send up your
garlic and onions by a rocket? I am a rogue
if I am not ashamed to show you our Monu-
ment on Fish-street Hill, after your alti-
tudes. Yet we think it somewhat.

What, the magnanimous Alexander in
tears?— cry, baby, put its finger in its eye,
it shall have another globe, round as an
orange, pretty moppet!

Mister Adams— 'odso, I honor your coat
—pray do us the favor to read to us that
sermon, which you lent to Mistress Slipslop
—the twenty and second in your portman-
teau there— on Female Incontinence— the
same— it will come in most irrelevantly and
impertinently seasonable to the time of the
day.

Good Master Raymund Lully, you look
wise. Pray correct that error.—

Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine
99

L.:!

ESSAYS OP ELIA

you a bumper, or a paradox. We will have
nothing said or done syllogistically this day.
Remove those logical forms, waiter, that no
gentleman break the tender shins of his ap-
prehension stumbling across them.

Master Stephen, you are late.— Ha! Cokes,
is it you?— Aguecheek, my dear knight, let
me pay my devoir to you.— Master Shallow,
your worship's poor servant to command.
—Master Silence, I will use few words with
you.— Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not
you in somewhere.— You six will engross all
the poor wit of the company to-day.— I know
it, I know it.

Ha! honest R , my fine old Librarian

of Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here
again? Bless thy doublet, it is not over-
new, threadbare as thy stories:— what dost
thou flitting about the world at this rate?
—Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed-
rid, have ceased to read long ago.— Thou
goest still among them, seeing if, peradven-
ture, thou canst hawk a volume or two.—

Good Granville S , thy last patron, is

flown.

King Pandion, he is dead,

All thy friends are lapt in lead. —

Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and

take your seat here, between Armado and
100

ALL FOOLS' DAY

Quisada; for in true courtesy, in gravity, in
fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous
smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature
of well-appareled speech, and the commen-
dation of wise sentences, thou art nothing
inferior to those accomplished Dons of
Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me
forever, when I forget thy singing the
song of Macheath, which declares that he
might be happy with ei^/ier, situated between
those two ancient spinsters— when I forget
the inimitable formal love which thou didst
make, turning now to the one, and now to
the other, with that Malvolian smile— as if
Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his
hero; and as if thousands of periods must
revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could
have given his invidious preference between
a pair of so goodly-propertied and meritori-
ous-equal damsels. * * *

To descend from these altitudes, and not
to protract our Fools' Banquet beyond its
appropriate day,— for I fear the second of
April is not many hours distant— in sober
verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader.
I love a Fool— as naturally as if I were of
kith and kin to him. When a child, with
childlike apprehensions, that dived not
below the surface of the matter, I read
those Parables— not guessing at the in-
101

ESSAYS OF ELIA

volved wisdom— I had more yearnings to-
wards that simple architect, that built his
house upon the sand, than I entertained for
his more cautious neighbor: I grudged at
the hard censure pronounced upon the quiet
soul that kept his talent; and— prizing their
simplicity beyond the more provident, and,
to my apprehension, somewhat unfeminine
wariness of their competitors— I felt a kind-
liness, that almost amounted to a tendre,
for those five thoughtless virgins.— I have
never made an acquaintance since, that
lasted: or a friendship, that answered; with
any that had not some tincture of the ab-
surd in their characters. I venerate an
honest obliquity of understanding. The
more laughable blunders a man shall com-
mit in your company, the more tests he
giveth you, that he will not betray or over-
reach you. I love the safety which a pal-
pable hallucination warrants; the security
which a word out of season ratifies. And
take my word for this, reader, and say a
fool told it you, if you please, that he who
hath not a dram of folly in his mixture,
hath pounds of much worse matter in his
composition. It is observed, that "the
foolisher the fowl or fish,— woodcocks,—
dotterels— cods'-heads, etc., the finer the
fl^sh thereof," and what are commonly the
102

ALL FOOLS' DAY

world's received fools but such whereof the
world is not worthy? and what have been
some of the kindliest patterns of our
species, but so many darlings of absurdity,
minions of the goddess, and her white
boys?— Reader, if you wrest my words be-
yond their fair construction, it is you, and
not I, that are the April Fool.

103

A QUAKERS' MEETING

still-born Silence ! thou that art

Flood-gate of the deeper heart !

Offspring of a heavenly kind !

Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind I

Secrecy's confidant, and he

Who makes religion mystery !

Admiration's speaking'st tongue!

Leave, thy desert shades among.

Reverend hermit's hallow'd cells.

Where retired devotion dwells !

With thy enthusiasms come,

Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! i

READER, would'st thou know what
true peace and quiet mean; would'st
' thou find a refuge from the noises
and clamors of the multitude; would'st thou
enjoy at once solitude and society; would'st
thou possess the depth of thine own spirit
in stillness, without being shut out from
the consolatory faces of thy species;
would'st thou be alone and yet accompanied;
solitary, yet not desolate; singular, yet not
without some to keep thee in countenance;
a unit in aggregate; a simple in composite:
—come with me into a Quakers' Meeting.
Dost thou love silence deep as that "be-

1 From "Poems of all sorts," by Richard Flecknoe, 1653.

104

A QUAKERS' MEETING

fore the winds were made "? go not out into
the wilderness, descend not into the pro-
fundities of the earth; shut not up thy case-
ments; nor pour wax into the httle cells of
thy ears, with little-f aith'd self-mistrusting
Ulysses.— Retire with me into a Quakers'
Meeting.

For a man to refrain even from good
words, and to hold his peace, it is com-
mendable; but for a multitude it is great
mastery.

What is the stillness of the desert com-
pared with this place? what the uncom-
municating muteness of fishes?— here the
goddess reigns and revels.— "Boreas, and
Cesias, and Argestes loud," do not with
their interconfounding uproars more aug-
ment the brawl— nor the waves of the blown
Baltic with their clubbed sounds— than
their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is
multiplied and rendered more intense by
numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath
her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation
itself hath a positive more and less; and
closed eyes would seem to obscure the great
obscurity of midnight.

There are wounds which an imperfect

solitude cannot heal. By imperfect I mean

that which a man enjoyeth by himself. The

perfect is that which he can sometimes

105

ESSAYS OF ELIA

attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely
as in a Quakers' Meeting.— Those first her-
mits did certainly understand this principle,
when they retired into Egyptian solitudes,
not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one an-
other's want of conversation. The Car-
thusian is bound to his brethren by this
agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. In
secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be
reading a book through a long winter even-
ing, with a friend sitting by— say, a wife—
he, or she, too (if that be probable), reading
another without interruption or oral com-
munication?—can there be no sympathy
without the gabble of words?— away with
this inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cav-
ern-haunting solitariness. Give me. Mas-
ter Zimmermann, a sympathetic solitude.

To pace alone in the cloisters or side
aisles of some cathedral, time-stricken;

Or under hanging mountains,
Or by the fall of fountains ;

is but a vulgar luxury compared with that
which those enjoy who come together for
the purposes of more complete, abstracted
solitude. This is the loneliness " to be felt."
—The Abbey Church of Westminster hath
nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as
106

A QUAKERS' MEETING

the naked walls and benches of a Quakers'
Meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscrip-
tions.

—Sands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruined sides of kings—

but here is something which throws An-
tiquity herself into the foreground— Si-
lence—eldest of things— language of old
Night— primitive Discourser— to which the
insolent decays of moldering grandeur have
but arrived by a violent, and, as we may
say, unnatural progression.

How reverend is the view of these hushed heads,
Looking tranquillity !

Nothing-plotting, naught-caballing, un-
mischievous synod! convocation without in-
trigue! parliament without debate! what a
lesson dost thou read to council, and to
consistory!— if my pen treat of you lightly
—as haply it will wander— yet my spirit
hath gravely felt the wisdom of your cus-
tom, when, sitting among you in deepest
peace, which some outwelling tears would
rather confirm than disturb, I have re-
verted to the times of your beginnings, and
the sowings of the seed by Pox and Dewes-
bury.— I have witnessed that which brought
107

ESSAYS OF ELIA

before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, in-
flexible to the rude jests and serious vio-
lences of the insolent soldiery, republican
or royalist, sent to molest you— for ye sate
betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the
outcast and offscouring of church and
presbytery.— I have seen the reeling sea-
ruffian, who had wandered into your re-
ceptacle with the avowed intention of dis-
turbing your quiet, from the very spirit of
the place receive in a moment a new heart,
and presently sit among ye as a lamb
amidst lambs. And I remember Penn be-
fore his accusers, and Fox in the bail-dock,
where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells
us, and " the Judge and the Jury became as
dead men under his feet."

Reader, if you are not acquainted with
it, I would recommend to you, above all
church-narratives, to read Sewel's History
of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the
abstract of the journals of Fox and the
primitive Friends. It is far more edifying
and affecting than anything you will read of
Wesley and his colleagues. Here is no-
thing to stagger you, nothing to make you
mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or
dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit.
You will here read the true story of that
much-injured, ridiculed man (who perhaps
108

A QUAKERS' MEETING

hath been a byword in your mouth)— James
Naylor : what dreadful sufferings, with what
patience, he endured, even to the boring
through of his tongue with red-hot irons,
without a murmur; and with what strength
of mind, when the delusion he had fallen
into, which they stigmatized for blasphemy,
had given way to clearer thoughts, he could
renounce his error, in a strain of the beau-
tifulest humility, yet keep his first grounds,
and be a Quaker still!— so different from
the practice of your common converts from
enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize,
apostatize all, and think they can never get
far enough from the society of their former
errors, even to the renunciation of some
saving truths, with which they had been
mingled, not implicated.

Get the writings of John Woolman by
heart; and love the early Quakers.

How far the followers of these good men
in our days have kept to the primitive
spirit, or in what proportion they have
substituted formality for it, the Judge of
Spirits can alone determine. I have seen
faces in their assemblies upon which the
dove sate visibly brooding. Others, again, I
have watched, when my thoughts should
have been better engaged, in which I could
possibly detect nothing but a blank inanity.
109

ESSAYS OF ELIA

But quiet was in all, and the disposition to
unanimity, and the absence of the fierce
controversial workings.— If the spiritual
pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at
least they make few pretenses. Hypocrites
they certainly are not, in their preaching.
It is seldom, indeed, that you shall see one
get up amongst them to hold forth. Only
now and then a trembling, female, gener-
ally ancient, voice is heard— you cannot
guess from what part of the meeting it
proceeds— with a low, buzzing, musical
sound, laying out a few words which "she
thought might suit the condition of some
present," with a quaking diffidence, which
leaves no possibility of supposing that any-
thing of female vanity was mixed up, where
the tones were so full of tenderness, and a
restraining modesty.— The men, for what I
have observed, speak seldomer.

Once only, and it was some years ago, I
witnessed a sample of the old Foxian or-
gasm. It was a man of giant stature, who,
as Wordsworth phrases it, might have
danced "from head to foot equipt in iron
mail." His frame was of iron too. But he
was malleable. I saw him shake all over
with the spirit— I dare not say of delusion.
The strivings of the outer man were unut-
terable—he seemed not to speak, but to be
110

A QUAKERS' MEETING

spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed
down, and his knees to fail— his joints all
seemed loosening— it was a figure to set oflf
against Paul preaching— the words he ut-
tered were few, and sound— he was evi-
dently resisting his will— keeping down his
own word-wisdom with more mighty effort
than the world's orators strain for theirs.
" He had been a WIT in his youth," he told
us, with expressions of a sober remorse.
And it was not till long after the impression
had begun to wear away, that I was en-
abled, with something like a smile, to recall
the striking incongruity of the confession —
understanding the term in its worldly ac-
ceptation— with the frame and physiognomy
of the person before me. His brow would
have scared away the Levities— the Jocos
Risus-que— faster than the Loves fled the
face of Dis at Enna.— By wit, even in his
youth, I will be sworn he understood some-
thing far within the limits of an allowable
liberty.

More frequently the Meeting is broken
up without a word having been spoken.
But the mind has been fed. You go away
with a sermon not made with hands. You
have been in the milder caverns of Tro-
phonius; or as in some den, where that
fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures,
111

ESSAYS OF ELIA

the Tongue, that unruly member, has
strangely lain tied up and captive. You
have bathed with stillness.— 0, when the
spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness
of the j anglings and nonsense-noises of the
world, what a balm and a solace it is to go
and seat yourself for a quiet half -hour upon
some undisputed corner of a bench, among
the gentle Quakers!

Their garb and stillness conjoined, pre-
sent a uniformity, tranquil and herd-like
—as in the pasture— "forty feeding like
one."—

The very garments of a Quaker seem in-
capable of receiving a soil; and cleanliness
in them to be something more than the
absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress
is a lily; and when they come up in bands
to their Whitsun conferences, whitening
the easterly streets of the metropolis, from
all parts of the United Kingdom, they show
like troops of the Shining Ones.

112

THE OLD AND THE NEW
SCHOOLMASTER

MY reading has been lamentably des-
ultory and immethodical. Odd, out-
of-the-way, old English plays, and
treatises, have supplied me with most of
my notions, and ways of feeling. In every-
thing that relates to science, I am a whole
Encyclopedia behind the rest of the world.
I should have scarcely cut a figure among
the franklins, or country gentlemen, in King
John's days. I know less geography than
a school-boy of six weeks' standing. To me
a map of old Ortelius is as authentic as
Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout
Africa merges into Asia; whether Ethiopia
lie in one or other of those great divisions;
nor can form the remotest conjecture of
the position of New South Wales, or Van
Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspon-
dence with a very dear friend in the first-
named of these two Terras Incognitse. I
have no astronomy. I do not know where
to look for the Bear, or Charles's Wain; the
place of any star; or the name of any of
them at sight. I guess at Venus only by
« 113

ESSAYS OF ELIA

her brightness— and if the sun on some por-
tentous morn were to make his first appear-
ance in the West, I verily beheve, that,
while all the world were gasping in appre-
hension about me, I alone should stand un-
terrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of
observation. Of history and chronology I
possess some vague points, such as one can-
not help picking up in the course of miscel-
laneous study; but I never deliberately sat
down to a chronicle, even of my own coun-
try. I have most dim apprehensions of the
four great monarchies; and sometimes the
Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as
first in my fancy. I make the widest con-
jectures concerning Egypt, and her shep-
herd kings. My friend M., with great pains-
taking, got me to think I understood the
first proposition in Euclid, but gave me over
in despair at the second. I am entirely
unacquainted with the modern languages;
and, like a better man than myself, have
"small Latin and less Greek." I am a
stranger to the shapes and texture of the
commonest trees, herbs, flowers— not from
the circumstance of my being town-born—
for I should have brought the same inob-
servant spirit into the world with me, had
I first seen it "on Devon's leafy shores,"—
and am no less at a loss among purely town
114

OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER

objects, tools, engines, mechanic processes^
—Not that I affect ignorance— but my head
has not many mansions, nor spacious; and
I have been obliged to fill it with such cab-
inet curiosities as it can hold without ach-
ing. I sometimes wonder how I have passed
my probation with so little discredit in the
world, as I have done, upon so meager a
stock. But the fact is, a man may do very
well with a very little knowledge, and scarce
be found out, in mixed company; everybody
is so much more ready to produce his own,
than to call for a display of your acquisi-
tions. But in a tete-d-tete there is no
shuffling. The truth will out. There is
nothing which I dread so much, as the being
left alone for a quarter of an hour with a
sensible, well-informed man, that does not
know me. I lately got into a dilemma of
this sort.—

In one of my daily jaunts between Bish-
opsgate and Shacklewell, the coach stopped
to take up a staid-looking gentleman, about
the wrong side of thirty, who was giving his
parting directions (while the steps were
adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a
tall youth, who seemed to be neither his
clerk, his son, nor his servant, but some-
thing partaking of all three. The youth
was dismissed, and we drove on. As we
115

ESSAYS OF ELIA

were the sole passengers, he naturally-
enough addressed his conversation to me;
and we discussed the merits of the fare;
the civility and punctuality of the driver;
the circumstance of an opposition coach
having been lately set up, with the proba-
bilities of its success— to all which I was
enabled to return pretty satisfactory an-
swers, having been drilled into this kind of
etiquette by some years' daily practice of
riding to and fro in the stage aforesaid —
when he suddenly alarmed me by a star-
tling question, whether I had seen the show
of prize cattle that morning in Smithfield?
Now, as I had not seen it, and do not greatly
care for such sort of exhibitions, I was
obliged to return a cold negative. He
seemed a little mortified, as well as aston-
ished, at my declaration, as (it appeared) he
was just come fresh from the sight, and
doubtless had hoped to compare notes on
the subject. However, he assured me that
I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded
the show of last year. We were now ap-
proaching Norton Polgate, when the sight
of some shop-goods ticketed freshened him
up into a dissertation upon the cheapness
of cottons this spring. I was now a little
in heart, as the nature of my morning avoca-
tions had brought me into some sort of
116

OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER

familiarity with the raw material; and I was
surprised to find how eloquent I was becom-
ing on the state of the India market; when,
presently, he dashed my incipient vanity to
the earth at once, by inquiring whether I
had ever made any calculation as to the
value of the rental of all the retail shops in
London. Had he asked of me what song
the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles
assumed when he hid himself among women,
I might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have
hazarded a " wide solution." ■^ My compan-
ion saw my embarrassment, and, the alms-
houses beyond Shoreditch just coming in
view, with great good-nature and dexterity
shifted his conversation to the subject of
public charities; which led to the compara-
tive merits of provision for the poor in past
and present times, with observations on the
old monastic institutions, and charitable
orders; but, finding me rather dimly im-
pressed with some glimmering notions from
old poetic associations, than strongly forti-
fied with any speculations reducible to cal-
culation on the subject, he gave the matter
up; and, the country beginning to open
more and more upon us, as we approached
the turnpike at Kingsland (the destined
termination of his journey), he put a home

1 Urn Burial.

117

ESSAYS OP ELIA

thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate
position he could have chosen, by advan-
cing some queries relative to the North Pole
Expedition. While I was muttering out
something about the Panorama of those
strange regions (which I had actually seen),
by way of parrying the question, the coach
stopping relieved me from any further ap-
prehensions. My companion getting out,
left me in the comfortable possession of my
ignorance; and I heard him, as he went off,
putting questions to an outside passenger,
who had alighted with him, regarding an
epidemic disorder that had been rife about
Dalston, and which my friend assured him
had gone through five or six schools in that
neighborhood. The truth now flashed upon
me, that my companion was a schoolmas-
ter; and that the youth, whom he had
parted from at our first acquaintance, must
have been one of the bigger boys, or the
usher.— He was evidently a kind-hearted
man, who did not seem so much desirous of
provoking discussion by the questions which
he put, as of obtaining information at any
rate. It did not appear that he took any
interest, either, in such kind of inquiries,
for their own sake; but that he was in some
way bound to seek for knowledge. A green-
ish-colored coat, which he had on, forbade
118

OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER

me to surmise that he was a clergyman.
The adventure gave birth to some reflec-
tions on the difference between persons of
his profession in past and present times.

Rest to the souls of those fine old Peda-
gogues; the breed, long since extinct, of the
Lilys and the Linacres: who believing that
all learning was contained in the languages
which they taught, and despising every
other acquirement as superficial and use-
less, came to their task as to a sport!
Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed
away all their days as in a grammar school.
Revolving in a perpetual cycle of declen-
sions, conjugations, syntaxes, and proso-
dies; renewing constantly the occupations
which had charmed their studious child-
hood; rehearsing continually the part of
the past; life must have slipped from them
at last like one day. They were always in
their first garden, reaping harvests of their
golden time, among their Flori- and their
Spiei-legia; in Arcadia still, but kings; the
ferule of their sway not much harsher, but
of like dignity with that mild scepter at-
tributed to king Basileus; the Greek and
Latin, their stately Pamela and their Philo-
clea; with the occasional duncery of some
untoward tyro, serving for a refreshing
interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown Damoetas!
119

ESSAYS OF ELIA

With what a savor doth the Preface to
Colet's, or (as it is sometimes called) Paul's
Accidence, set forth! "To exhort every
man to the learning of grammar, that in-
tendeth to attain the understanding of the
tongues, wherein is contained a great trea-
sury of wisdom and knowledge, it would
seem but vain and lost labour; for so much
as it is known, that nothing can surely be
ended, whose beginning is either feeble or
faulty; and no building be perfect whereas
the foundation and groundwork is ready to
fall, and unable to uphold the burden of the
frame." How well doth this stately pre-
amble (comparable to those which Milton
commendeth as " having been the usage to
prefix to some solemn law, then first pro-
mulgated by Solon or Lycurgus") corre-
spond with and illustrate that pious zeal
for conformity, expressed in a succeeding
clause, which would fence about grammar-
rules with the severity of faith-articles!—
" as for the diversity of grammars, it is well
profitably taken away by the King's Majes-
ties wisdom, who foreseeing the inconve-
nience, and favourably providing the reme-
die, caused one kind of grammar by sundry
learned men to be diligently drawn, and so
to be set out, only everywhere to be taught
for the use of learners, and for the hurt in
120

OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER

changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto
in that which follows: "wherein it is profit-
able that he [the pupil] can orderly decline
his noun and his verb." His noun !

The fine dream is fading away fast; and
the least concern of a teacher in the present
day is to inculcate grammar-rules.

The modern schoolmaster is expected to
know a little of everything, because his
pupil is required not to be entirely ignorant
of anything. He must be superficially, if I
may so say, omniscient. He is to know
something of pneumatics; of chemistry; of
whatever is curious or proper to excite the
attention of the youthful mind; an insight
into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of
statistics; the quality of soils, etc., botany,
the constitution of his country, cum multis
aliis. You may get a notion of some part
of his expected duties by consulting the
famous Tractate on Education, addressed to
Mr. Hartlib.

All these things— these, or the desire of
them— he is expected to instil, not by set
lessons from professors, which he may
charge in the bill, but at school intervals,
as he walks the streets, or saunters through
green fields (those natural instructors), with
his pupils. The least part of what is ex-
pected from him is to be done in school
121

ESSAYS OF ELIA

hours. He must insinuate knowledge at
the mollia tempora fandi. He must seize
every occasion— the season of the year— the
time of the day— a passing cloud— a rain-
bow—a wagon of hay— a regiment of sol-
diers going by— to inculcate something
useful. He can receive no pleasure from a
casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch
at it as an object of instruction. He must
interpret beauty into the picturesque. He
cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for
thinking of the suitable improvement.
Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the
sophisticating medium of moral uses. The
Universe— that Great Book, as it has been
called— is to him, indeed, to all intents and
purposes, a book out of which he is doomed
to read tedious homilies to distasting school-
boys.—Vacations themselves are none to
him, he is only rather worse off than before;
for commonly he has some intrusive upper-
boy fastened upon him at such times; some
cadet of a great family; some neglected lump
of nobility, or gentry; that he must drag
after him to the play, to the Panorama, to
Mr. Hartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, or
into the country, to a friend's house, or his
favorite watering-place. Wherever he goes
this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is
at his board, and in his path, and in all his
122

\

OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER

movements. He is boy-rid, sick of per-
petual boy.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way,
among their mates; but they are unwhole-
some companions for grown people. The
restraint is felt no less on the one side than
on the other.— Even a child, that "plaything
for an hour," tires always. The noises of
children, playing their own fancies— as I
now harken to them, by fits, sporting on
the green before my window, while I am
engaged in these grave speculations at my
neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell— by
distance made more sweet— inexpressibly
take from the labor of my task. It is like
writing to music. They seem to modulate
my periods. They ought at least to do so
—for in the voice of that tender age there
is a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh
prose-accents of man's conversation.— I
should but spoil their sport, and diminish
my own sympathy for them, by mingling in
their pastime.

I would not be domesticated all my days
with a person of very superior capacity to
my own— not, if I know myself at all, from
any considerations of Jealousy or self-com-
parison, for the occasional communion with
such minds has constituted the fortune and
felicity of my life— but the habit of too con-
123

ESSAYS OF ELIA

stant intercourse with spirits above yo"u,
instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too
frequent doses of original thinking from
others restrain what lesser portion of that
faculty you may possess of your own. You
get entangled in another man's mind, even
as you lose yourself in another man's
grounds. You are walking with a tall var-
let, whose strides outpace yours to lassi-
tude. The constant operation of such
potent agency would reduce me, I am con-
vinced, to imbecility. You may derive
thoughts from others; your way of think-
ing, the mold in which your thoughts are
cast, must be your own. Intellect may be
imparted, but not each man's intellectual
frame. —

As little as I should wish to be always
thus dragged upward, as little (or rather
still less) is it desirable to be stunted down-
wards by your associates. The trumpet
does not more stun you by its loudness,
than a whisper teases you by its provoking
inaudibility.

Why are we never quite at our ease in
the presence of a schoolmaster?— because
we are conscious that he is not quite at his
ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of
place in the society of his equals. He comes
like Gulliver from among his little people,
124

OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER

and he cannot fit the stature of his under-
standing to yours. He cannot meet you on
the square. He wants a point given him,
like an indifferent whist-player. He is so
used to teaching, that he wants to be teach-
ing you. One of these professors, upon my
complaining that these little sketches of
mine were anything but methodical, and
that I was unable to make them otherwise,
kindly offered to instruct me in the method
by which young gentlemen in his seminary
were taught to compose English themes.—
The jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or
thin. They do not tell out of school. He
is under the restraint of a formal or didac-
tive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman
is under a moral one. He can no more let
his intellect loose in society than the other
can his inclinations. He is forlorn among
his coevals; his juniors cannot be his
friends.

" I take blame to myself," said a sensible
man of this profession, writing to a friend
respecting a youth who had quitted his
school abruptly, " that your nephew was not
more attached to me. But persons in my
situation are more to be pitied than can
well be imagined. We are surrounded by
young, and, consequently, ardently affec-
tionate hearts, but we can never hope to
125

ESSAYS OF ELIA

Siiare an atom of their affections. The re-
lation of master and scholar forbids this.
How pleasing this must be to you, how I envy
your feelings ! my friends will sometimes
say to me, when they see young men whom
I have educated, return after some years'
absence from school, their eyes shining
with pleasure, while they shake hands with
their old master, bringing a present of game
to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking
me in the warmest terms for my care of
their education. A holiday is begged for
the boys; the house is a scene of happiness;
I, only, am sad at heart.— This fine-spirited
and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he
repays his master with gratitude for the
care of his boyish years— this young man-
in the eight long years I watched over him
with a parent's anxiety, never could repay
me with one look of genuine feeling. He
was proud, when I praised; he was submis-
sive, when I reproved him; but he did never
love me— and what he now mistakes for
gratitude and kindness for me, is but the
pleasant sensation which all persons feel at
revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopes
and fears; and the seeing on equal terms
the man they were accustomed to look up
to with reverence. My wife, too," this in-
teresting correspondent goes on to say, " my
126

OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER

once darling Anna, is the wife of a school-
master.—When I married her— knowing
that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be
a busy, notable creature, and fearing that
my gentle Anna would ill supply the loss of
my dear bustling mother, just then dead,
who never sat still, was in every part of
the house in a moment, and whom I was
obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten
down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing
herself to death— I expressed my fears that
I was bringing her into a way of life unsuit-
able to her; and she, who loved me tenderly,
promised for my sake to exert herself to
perform the duties of her new situation.
She promised, and she has kept her word.
What wonders will not woman's love per-
form?—My house is managed with a pro-
priety and decorum unknown in other
schools; my boys are well fed, look healthy,
and have every proper accommodation; and
all this performed with a careful economy,
that never descends to meanness. But I
have lost my gentle helpless Anna! When
we sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after
the fatigue of the day, I am compelled to
listen to what have been her useful (and
they are really useful) employments through
the day, and what she proposes for her to-
morrow's task. Her heart and her features
127

ESSAYS OP ELIA

are changed by the duties of her situation.
To the boys, she never appears other than
the master's wife, and she looks up to me
as the boys' master ; to whom all show of
love and affection would be highly improper,
and unbecoming the dignity of her situation
and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids
me to hint to her. For my sake she sub-
mitted to be this altered creature, and can
I reproach her for it?"— For the communi-
cation of this letter I am indebted to my
cousin Bridget.

128

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES

I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympa-
thizeth with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idio-
syncrasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not
touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian,
Spaniard, or Dutch. — Beligio Medici.

THAT the author of the Religio Medici
mounted upon the airy stilts of ab-
straction, conversant about notional
and conjectural essences; in whose cate-
gories of Being the possible took the upper
hand of the actual; should have overlooked
the impertinent individualities of such poor
concretions as mankind, is not much to be
admired. It is rather to be wondered at,
that in the genus of animals he should have
condescended to distinguish that species at
all. For myself— earth-bound and fettered
to the scene of my activities, —

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky,

I confess that I do feel the differences of
mankind, national or individual, to an un-
healthy excess.- I can look with no indiffer-
ent eye upon things or persons. Whatever
is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste; or
3 129

ESSAYS OF ELIA

when once it becomes indifferent it begins
to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words,
a bundle of prejudices— made up of likings
and dislikings— the veriest thrall to sym-
pathies, apathies, antipathies. In a certain
sense, I hope it may be said of me that I am
a lover of my species. I can feel for all
indifferently, but I cannot feel towards all
equally. The more purely English word that
expresses sympathy, will better explain my
meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man,
who upon another account cannot be my
mate ov fellow. I cannot like all people alike.^

1 I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of
imperfect sympathies. To nations or classes of men tbere can
be no direct antipathy. There may be individuals born and
constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that the
same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my moral
antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting
(who never saw one another before in their lives) and in-
stantly fighting.

— We by proof find there should be
'Twixt man and man such an antipathy.
That though he can show no just reason why
For any former wrong or injury,
Can neither find a blemish in his fame,
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame,
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil.
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil.

The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchic of Angels,"
and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard
who attempted to assassinate a king Ferdinand of Spain, and
being put to the rack could give no other reason for the deed
but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken to the first
sight of the king.

— The cause which to that act compell'd him
Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him.

130

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES

I have been trying all my life to like
Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from
the experiment in despair. They cannot
like me — and in truth, I never knew one of
that nation who attempted to do it. There
is something more plain and ingenuous in
their mode of proceeding. We know one
another at first sight. There is an order of
imperfect intellects (under which mine must
be content to rank) which in its constitution
is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners
of the sort of faculties I allude to, have
minds rather suggestive than comprehen-
sive. They have no pretenses to much
clearness or precision in their ideas, or in
their manner of expressing them. Their
intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has
few whole pieces in it. They are content
with fragments and scattered pieces of
Truth. She presents no full front to them
—a feature or side-face at the most. Hints
and glimpses, germs and crude essays at
a system, is the utmost they pretend to.
They beat up a little game peradventure—
and leave it to knottier heads, more robust
constitutions, to run it down. The light
that lights them is not steady and polar,
but mutable and shifting: waxing, and again
waning. Their conversation is accordingly.
They will throw out a random word in or
131

ESSAYS OF ELIA

out of season, and be content to let it pass
for what it is worth. They cannot speak
always as if they were upon their oath— but
must be understood, speaking or writing,
with some abatement. They seldom wait
to mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to
market in the green ear. They delight to
impart their defective discoveries as they
arise, without waiting for their full develop-
ment. They are no systematizers, and
would but err more by attempting it. Their
minds, as I said before, are suggestive
merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if
I am not mistaken) is constituted upon
quite a different plan. His Minerva is born
in panoply. You are never admitted to see
his ideas in their growth— if, indeed, they
do grow, and are not rather put together
upon principles of clockwork. You never
catch his mind in an undress. He never
hints or suggests anything, but unlades his
stock of ideas in perfect order and complete-
ness. He brings his total wealth into com-
pany, and gravely unpacks it. His riches
are always about him. He never stoops to
catch a glittering something in your pres-
ence to share it with you, before he quite
knows whether it be true touch or not.
You cannot cry halves to anything that he
finds. He does not find, but bring. You
132

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES

never witness his first apprehension of a
thing. His understanding is always at its
meridian— you never see the first dawn, the
early streaks.— He has no falterings of self-
suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings,
half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, par-
tial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo
conceptions, have no place in his brain or
vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never
falls upon him. Is he orthodox— he has no
doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none
either. Between the affirmative and the
negative there is no border-land with him.
You cannot hover with him upon the con-
fines of truth, or wander in the maze of a
probable argument. He always keeps the
path. You cannot make excursions with
him —for he sets you right. His taste never
fluctuates. His morality never abates. He
cannot compromise, or understand middle
actions. There can be but a right and a
wrong. His conversation is as a book. His
affirmations have the sanctity of an oath.
You must speak upon the square with him.
He stops a metaphor like a suspected person
in an enemy's country. " A healthy book! "
—said one of his countrymen to me, who
had ventured to give that appellation to
John Buncle,— "Did I catch rightly what
you said? I have heard of a man in health,
133

ESSAYS OF ELIA

and of a healthy state of body, but I do not
see how that epithet can be properly applied
to a book." Above all, you must beware of
indirect expressions before a Caledonian.
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you
are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Re-
member you are upon your oath. I have a
print of a graceful female after Leonardo da
Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. * * * *
After he had examined it minutely, I ven-
tured to ask him how he liked MY beauty
(a foolish name it goes by among my friends)
—when he very gravely assured me, that
"he had considerable respect for my char-
acter and talents" (so he was pleased to
say), "but had not given himself much
thought about the degree of my personal
pretensions." The misconception stag-
gered me, but did not seem much to dis-
concert him.— Persons of this nation are
particularly fond of affirming a truth—
which nobody doubts. They do not so
properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do
indeed appear to have such a love of truth
(as if, like virtue, it were valuable for
itself) that all truth becomes equally valu-
able, whether the proposition that contains
it be new or old, disputed, or such as is im-
possible to become a subject of disputation.
I was present not long since at a party of
134

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES

North Britons, where a son of Burns was
expected; and happened to drop a silly ex-
pression (in my South British way), that I
wished it were the father instead of the son
—when four of them started up at once to
inform me, that "that was impossible, be-
cause he was dead." An impracticable wish,
it seems, was more than they could con-
ceive. Swift has hit off this part of their
character, namely their love of truth, in his
biting way, but with an illiberality that
necessarily confines the passage to the mar-
gin.^ The tediousness of these people is
certainly provoking. I wonder if they ever
tire one another!— In my early life I had a
passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns.
I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingrati-
ate myself with his countrymen by express-
ing it. But I have always found that a true
Scot resents your admiration of his com-
patriot even more than he would your con-
tempt of him. The latter he imputes to
your "imperfect acquaintance with many

1 There are some people who think they sujficiently acquit
themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts
of no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common
incidents as happen every day; and this I have observed
more frequently among the Scots than any other nation, who
are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of
time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little
relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent
and gesture, peculiar to that country, would be hardly toler-
able.— Hints toioards an Essay on Conversation.

135

ESSAYS OF ELIA

of the words which he uses "; and the same
objection makes it a presumption in you to
suppose that you can admire him.— Thom-
son they seem to have forgotten. Smollett
they have neither forgotten nor forgiven,
for his delineation of Rory and his compan-
ion, upon their first introduction to our
metropolis.— Speak of Smollett as a great
genius, and they will retort upon you
Hume's History compared with his Con-
tinuation of it. What if the historian had
continued Humphrey Clinker?

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for
Jews. They are a piece of stubborn an-
tiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is
in its nonage. They date beyond the pyra-
mids. But I should not care to be in habits
of familiar intercourse with any of that na-
tion. I confess that I have not the nerves
to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices
cling about me. I cannot shake off the
story of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of in-
jury, contempt, and hate, on the one side,
—of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and
hate, on the other, between our and their
fathers, must and ought to affect the blood
of the children. I cannot believe it can run
clear and kindly yet; or that a few fine
words, such as candor, liberality, the light
of a nineteenth century, can close up the
136

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES

breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew
is nowhere congenial to me. He is least
distasteful on 'Change— for the mercantile
spirit levels all distinctions, as all are
beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that
I do not relish the approximation of Jew
and Christian, which has become so fash-
ionable. The reciprocal endearments have,
to me, something hypocritical and unnatural
in them. I do not like to see the Church
and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in
awkward postures of an affected civility. If
they are converted, why do they not come
over to us altogether? Why keep up a form
of separation, when the life of it is fled?
If they can sit with us at table, why do they
keck at our cookery? I do not understand
these half convertites. Jews christianizing
—Christians judaizing— puzzle me. I like
fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more
confounding piece of anomaly than a wet
Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is

essentially separative. B would have

been more in keeping if he had abided by
the faith of his forefathers. There is a fine
scorn in his face, which nature meant to

be of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is

strong in him, in spite of his proselytism.

He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it

breaks out, when he sings, "The Children

137

ESSAYS OF ELIA

of Israel passed through the Red Sea"!
The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyp-
tians to him, and he rides over our necks in
triumph. There is no mistaking him.

B has a strong expression of sense in

his countenance, and it is confirmed by his
singing. The foundation of his vocal excel-
lence is sense. He sings with understand-
ing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He
would sing the Commandments, and give an
appropriate character to each prohibition.
His nation, in general, have not over-sensi-
ble countenances. How should they?— but
you' seldom see a silly expression among
them. Gain, and the pursuit of gain,
sharpen a man's visage. I never heard
of an idiot being born among them.—
Some admire the Jewish female physiog-
nomy. I admire it— but with trembling.
Jael had those full, dark, inscrutable
eyes.

In the Negro countenance you will often
meet with strong traits of benignity. I have
felt yearnings of tenderness towards some
of these faces— or rather masks— that have
looked out kindly upon one in casual en-
counters in the streets and highways. I
love what Fuller beautifully calls— these
" images of God cut in ebony." But I should
not like to associate with them, to share
138

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES

my meals and my good nights with them—
because they are black.

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship.
I venerate the Quaker principles. It does
me good for the rest of the day when I
meet any of their people in my path. When
I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence,
the sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts
upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air,
and taking off a load from the bosom. But
I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona
would say) "to live with them." I am all
over sophisticated— with humors, fancies,
craving hourly sympathy. I must have
books, pictures, theaters, chit-chat, scandal,
jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim-
whams, which their simpler taste can do
without. I should starve at their primitive
banquet. My appetites are too high for the
salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve
dressed for the angel; my gusto too excited

To sit a guest witli Daniel at his pulse.

The indirect answers which Quakers are
often found to return to a question put to
them may be explained, I think, without the
vulgar assumption, that they are more given
to evasion and equivocating than other
people. They naturally look to their words
139

ESSAYS OF ELIA

more carefully, and are more cautious of
committing themselves. They have a
peculiar character to keep up on this head.
They stand in a manner upon their veracity.
A Quaker is by law exempted from taking
an oath. The custom of resorting to an
oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by
all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be
confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort
of minds the notion of two kinds of truth—
the one applicable to the solemn affairs of
justice, and the other to the common pro-
ceedings of daily intercourse. As truth
bound upon the conscience by an oath can
be but truth, so in the common affirmations
of the shop and the market-place a latitude
is expected and conceded upon questions
wanting this solemn covenant. Something
less than truth satisfies. It is common to
hear a person say, "You do not expect me
to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence
a great deal of incorrectness and inadver-
tency, short of falsehood, creeps into ordi-
nary conversation; and a kind of secondary
or laic truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth
—oath- truth, by the nature of the circum-
stances, is not required. A Quaker knows
none of this distinction. His simple affirma-
tion being received upon the most sacred
occasions, without any further test, stamps
140

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES

a value upon the words which he is to use
upon the most indifferent topics of hfe. He
looks to them, naturally, with more severity.
You can have of him no more than his word.
He knows, if he is caught tripping in a
casual expression, he forfeits, for himself at
least, his claim to the invidious exemption.
He knows that his syllables are weighed—
and how far a consciousness of this particu-
lar watchfulness, exerted against a person,
has a tendency to produce indirect answers,
and a diverting of the question by honest
means, might be illustrated, and the practice
justified by a more sacred example than is
proper to be adduced upon this occasion.
The admirable presence of mind, which is
notorious in Quakers upon all contingencies,
might be traced to this imposed self-watch-
fulness—if it did not seem rather an hum-
ble and secular scion of that old stock of
religious constancy, which never bent or
faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave
way to the winds of persecution, to the vio-
lence of judge or accuser, under trials and
racking examinations. " You will never be
the wiser, if I sit here answering your
questions till midnight," said one of those
upright Justicers to Penn, who had been
putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety.
"Thereafter as the answers may be," re-
141

ESSAYS OF ELIA

torted the Quaker. The astonishing com-
posure of this people is sometimes ludi-
crously displayed in lighter instances.— I
was traveling in a stage-coach with three
male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest
nonconformity of their sect. We stopped
to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea
apparatus, partly supper, was set before us.
My friends confined themselves to the tea-
table. I in my way took supper. When
the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest
of my companions discovered that she had
charged for both meals. This was resisted.
Mine hostess was very clamorous and posi-
tive. Some mild arguments were used on
the part of the Quakers, for which the
heated mind of the good lady seemed by no
means a fit recipient. The guard came in
with his usual peremptory notice. The
Quakers pulled out their money and for-
mally tendered it — so much for tea — I, in
humble imitation, tendering mine— for the
supper which I had taken. She would not
relax in her demand. So they all three
quietly put up their silver, as did myself,
and marched out of the room, the eldest
and gravest going first, with myself closing
up the rear, who thought I could not do
better than follow the example of such
grave and warrantable personages. We
142

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES

got in. The steps went up. The coach
drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess,
not very indistinctly or ambiguously pro-
nounced, became after a time inaudible—
and now my conscience, which the whimsi-
cal scene had for a while suspended, begin-
ning to give some twitches, I waited, in the
hope that some justification would be offered
by these serious persons for the seeming in-
justice of their conduct. To my great sur-
prise not a syllable was dropped on the
subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting.
At length the eldest of them broke silence,
by inquiring of his next neighbor, "Hast
thee heard how indigos go at the India
House?" and the question operated as a
soporific on my moral feeling as far as
Exeter.

143

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT
FEARS

WE are too hasty when we set down
our ancestors in the gross for
fools, for the monstrous incon-
sistencies (as they seem to us) involved in
their creed of witchcraft. In the relations
of this visible world we find them to have
been as rational, and shrewd to detect an
historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when
once the invisible world was supposed to be
open, and the lawless agency of bad spirits
assumed, what measures of probability, of
decency, of fitness, or proportion— of that
which distinguishes the likely from the
palpable absurd— could they have to guide
them in the rejection or admission of any
particular testimony?— That maidens pined
away, wasting inwardly as their waxen im-
ages consumed before a fire— that corn was
lodged, and cattle lamed— that whirlwinds
uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the
forest— or that spits and kettles only danced
a fearful-innocent vagary about some rus-
tic's kitchen when no wind was stirring —
were all equally probable where no law of
144

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS

agency was understood. That the prince of
the powers of darkness, passing by the
flower and pomp of the earth, should lay
preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of
indigent eld— has neither likelihood nor
unlikelihood a priori to us, who have no
measure to guess at his policy, or standard
to estimate what rate those anile souls may
fetch in the devil's market. Nor, when the
wicked are expressly symbolized by a goat,
was it to be wondered at so much, that he
should come sometimes in that body, and
assert his metaphor.— That the intercourse
was opened at all between both worlds was
perhaps the mistake— but that once as-
sumed, I see no reason for disbelieving one
attested story of this nature more than
another on the score of absurdity. There is
no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by
which a dream may be criticized.

I have sometimes thought that I could not
have existed in the days of received witch-
craft; that I could not have slept in a village
where one of those reputed hags dwelt.
Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse.
Amidst the universal belief that these
wretches were in league with the author of
all evil, holding hell tributary to their mut-
tering, no simple justice of the peace seems
to have scrupled issuing, or silly headbor-
10 145

ESSAYS OF ELIA

ough serving, a warrant upon them— as if
they should subpoena Satan!— Prosper© in
his boat, with his books and wand about
him, suffers himself to be conveyed away at
the mercy of his enemies to an unknown
island. He might have raised a storm or
two, we think, on the passage. His acquies-
cence is in exact analogy to the non-resis-
tance of witches to the constituted powers.
—What stops the Fiend in Spenser from
tearing Guyon to pieces— or who had made
it a condition of his prey that Guyon must
take assay of the glorious bait— we have no
guess. We do not know the laws of that
country.

From my childhood I was extremely in-
quisitive about witches and witch-stories.
My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied
me with good store. But I shall mention
the accident which directed my curiosity
originally into this channel. In my father's
book-closet the History of the Bible by
Stackhouse occupied a distinguished station.
The pictures with which it abounds— one of
the ark, in particular, and another of Solo-
mon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity
of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist
had been upon the spot— attracted my child-
ish attention. There was a picture, too, of
the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish
146

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS

that I had never seen. We shall come to
that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge
tomes;— and there was a pleasure in remov-
ing folios of that magnitude, which, with
infinite straining, was as much as I could
manage, from the situation which they oc-
cupied upon an upper shelf. I have not met
with the work from that time to this, hut I
remember it consisted of Old Testament
stories, orderly set down, with the objection
appended to each story, and the solution of
the objection regularly tacked to that. The
objection was a summary of whatever diffi-
culties had been opposed to the credibility
of the history by the shrewdness of ancient
or modern infidelity, drawn up with an al-
most complimentary excess of candor. The
solution was brief, modest, and satisfactory.
The bane and antidote were both before you.
To doubts so put, and so quashed, there
seemed to be an end forever. The dragon
lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to
trample on. But— like as was rather feared
than realized from that slain monster in
Spenser— from the womb of those crushed
errors young dragonets would creep, ex-
ceeding the prowess of so tender a Saint
George as myself to vanquish. The habit
of expecting objections to every passage
set me upon starting more objections, for
147

ESSAYS OP ELIA

the glory of finding a solution of my own
for them. I became staggered and per-
plexed, a skeptic in long coats. The pretty
Bible stories which I had read, or heard read
in church, lost their purity and sincerity of
impression, and were turned into so many
historic or chronologic theses to be defended
against whatever impugners. I was not to
disbelieve them, but— the next thing to
that— I was to be quite sure that some one
or other would or had disbelieved them.
Next to making a child an infidel is the let-
ting him know that there are infidels at all.
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the
child's strength. 0, how ugly sound scrip-
tural doubts from the mouth of a babe and
a suckling!— I should have lost myself in
these mazes, and have pined away, I think,
with such unfit sustenance as these husks
afforded, but for a fortunate piece of ill
fortune which about this time befell me.
Turning over the picture of the ark with
too much haste, I unhappily made a breach
in its ingenious fabric— driving my incon-
siderate fingers right through the two larger
quadrupeds, the elephant and the camel,
that stare (as well they might) out of the
two last windows next the steerage in that
unique piece of naval architecture. Stack-
house was henceforth locked up, and be-
148

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS

came an interdicted treasure. With the
book, the objections and solutions gradually
cleared out of my head, and have seldom
returned since in any force to trouble me.
But there was one impression which I had
imbibed from Stackhouse which no lock or
bar could shut out, and which was destined
to try my childish nerves rather more seri-
ously.—That detestable picture!

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors.
The night-time, solitude, and the dark were
my hell. The sufferings I endured in this na-
ture would justify the expression. I never
laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from
the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of
my life— so far as memory serves in things
so long ago— without an assurance, which
realized its own prophecy, of seeing some
frightful specter. Be old Stackhouse then
acquitted in part, if I say that to his pic-
ture of the Witch raising up Samuel— (0
that old man covered with a mantle!)— I
owe— not my midnight terrors, the hell of
my infancy— but the shape and manner of
their visitation. It was he who dressed up
for me a hag that nightly sate upon my pil-
low—a sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my
maid was far from me. All day long, while
the book was permitted me, I dreamed wak-.
ing over his delineation, and at night (if I
149

ESSAYS OF ELIA

may use so bold an expression) awoke into
sleep, and found the vision true. I durst
not, even in the daylight, once enter the
chamber where I slept, without my face
turned to the window, aversely from the bed
where my witch-ridden pillow was. — Parents
do not know what they do when they leave
tender babes alone to go to sleep in the
dark. The feeling about for a friendly arm
— the hoping for a familiar voice— when
they wake screaming— and find none to
soothe them— what a terrible shaking it is
to their poor nerves ! The keeping them up
till midnight, through candle-light and the
unwholesome hours, as they are called,—
would, I am satisfied, in a medical point of
view, prove the better caution.— That de-
testable picture, as I have said, gave the
fashion to my dreams— if dreams they were
—for the scene of them was invariably the
room in which I lay. Had I never met with
the picture, the fears would have come self-
pictured in some shape or other —

Headless bear, black man, or ape—

but, as it was, my imaginations took that
form.— It is not book, or picture, or the
stories of foolish servants, which create
these terrors in children. They can at most
150

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS

but give them a direction. Dear little T. H.,
who of all children has been brought up
with the most scrupulous exclusion of every
taint of superstition— who was never al-
lowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or
scarcely to be told of bad men, or to read
or hear of any distressing story— finds all
this world of fear, from which he has been
so rigidly excluded ah extra, in his own
"thick-coming fancies "; and from his little
midnight pillow, this nurse-child of opti-
mism will start at shapes, unborrowed of
tradition, in sweats to which the reveries of
the cell-damned murderer are tranquillity.
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire
—stories of Celseno and the Harpies— may
reproduce themselves in the brain of super-
stition—but they were there before. They
are transcripts, types— the archetypes are
in us, and eternal. How else should the
recital of that, which we know in a waking
sense to be false, come to affect us at all?
—or

—Names, whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not?

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from
such objects, considered in their capacity of
being able to inflict upon us bodily injury?
—0, least of all! These terrors are of older
151

ESSAYS OF ELIA

standing. They date beyond body— or, with-
out the body, they would have been the
same. All the cruel, tormenting, defined
devils in Dante— tearing, mangling, chok-
ing, stifling, scorching demons— are they
one half so fearful to the spirit of a man, as
the simple idea of a spirit unembodied fol-
lowing him —

Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn'd round, walks on
And turns no more his head ;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. i

That the kind of fear here treated of is
purely spiritual— that it is strong in propor-
tion as it is objectless upon earth— that it
predominates in the period of sinless in-
fancy—are difficulties, the solution of which
might afford some probable insight into our
ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least
into the shadow-land of preexistence.

My night fancies have long ceased to
be afflictive. I confess an occasional night-
mare; but I do not, as in early youth,
keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with
the extinguished taper, will come and look
at me; but I know them for mockeries, even

1 Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.

152

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS

while I cannot elude their presence, and I
fight and grapple with them. For the credit
of my imagination, I am almost ashamed to
say how tame and prosaic my dreams are
grown. They are never romantic, seldom
even rural. They are of architecture and
of buildings— cities abroad, which I have
never seen and hardly have hoped to see.
I have traversed, for the seeming length of
a natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris,
Lisbon— their churches, palaces, squares,
market-places, shops, suburbs, ruins, with
an inexpressible sense of delight— a map-
like distinctness of trace, and a daylight
vividness of vision, that was all but being
awake.— I have formerly traveled among the
Westmoreland fells— my highest Alps,— but
they are objects too mighty for the grasp of
my dreaming recognition; and I have again
and again awoke with ineffectual struggles
of the inner eye, to make out a shape, in
any way whatever, of Helvellyn. Methought
I was in that country, but the mountains
were gone. The poverty of my dreams mor-
tifies me. There is Coleridge, at his will
can conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-
houses for Kubla Khan, and Abyssinian
maids, and songs of Abara, and caverns.

Where Alph, the sacred river, runs,
153

ESSAYS OF ELIA

to solace his night solitudes— when I cannot
muster a fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his
tritons and his nereids gamboling before
him in nocturnal visions, and proclaiming
sons born to Neptune— when my stretch of
imaginative activity can hardly, in the night
season, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife.
To set my failures in somewhat a mortifying
light— it was after reading the noble Dream
of this poet, that my fancy ran strong upon
these marine spectra; and the poor plastic
power, such as it is, within me set to work
to humor my folly in a sort of dream that
very night. Methought I was upon the
ocean billows at some sea nuptials, riding
and mounted high, with the customary
train sounding their conchs before me (I
myself, you may be sure, the leading god),
and jollily we went careering over the main,
till just where Ino Leucothea should have
greeted me (I think it was Ino) with a white
embrace, the billows gradually subsiding,
fell from a sea roughness to a sea calm, and
thence to a river motion, and that river (as
happens in the familiarization of dreams)
was no other than the gentle Thames, which
landed me in the wafture of a placid wave
or two, alone, safe and inglorious, some-
where at the foot of Lambeth palace.
The degree of the soul's creativeness in
154

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS

sleep might furnish no whimsical criterion
of the quantum of poetical faculty resident
in the same soul waking. An old gentle-
man, a friend of mine and a humorist, used
to carry this notion so far, that when he
saw any stripling of his acquaintance am-
bitious of becoming a poet, his first ques-
tion would be,— "Young man, what sort of
dreams have you? " I have so much faith
in my old friend's theory, that when I feel
that idle vein returning upon me, I presently
subside into my proper element of prose,
remembering those eluding nereids, and
that inauspicious inland landing.

155

VALENTINE'S DAY

HAIL to thy returning festival, old
Bishop Valentine! Great is thy
name in the rubric, thou venerable
Archflamen of Hymen! Immortal Go-be-
tween; who and what manner of person art
thou? Art thou but a name, typifying the
restless principle which impels poor hu-
mans to seek perfection in union? or wert
thou indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet
and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent
lawn sleeves? Mysterious personage!
Like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other
mitered father in the calendar; not Jerome,
nor Ambrose, nor Cyril; nor the consigner
of undipt infants to eternal torments, Aus-
tin, whom all mothers hate; nor he who
hated all mothers, Origen; nor Bishop Bull,
nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgif t. Thou
comest attended with thousands and ten
thousands of little Loves, and the air is

Brush' d with the hiss of rustling wings.

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy
precentors; and instead of the crozier, the
mystical arrow is borne before thee.
156

VALENTINE'S DAY

In other words, this is the day on which
those charming Httle missives, ycleped
Valentines, cross and intercross each other
at every street and turning. The weary and
all forspent twopenny postman sinks be-
neath a load of delicate embarrassments,
not his own. It is scarcely credible to what
an extent this ephemeral courtship is car-
ried on in this loving town, to the great
enrichment of porters, and detriment of
knockers and bell-wires. In these little
visual interpretations, no emblem is so
common as the heart,— that little three-
cornered exponent of all our hopes and
fears,— the bestuck and bleeding heart; it is
tivisted and tortured into more allegories
and affectations than an opera-hat. What
authority we have in history or mythology
for placing the headquarters and metropolis
of god Cupid in this anatomical seat rather
than in any other, is not very clear; but we
have got it, and it will serve as well as any
other. Else we might easily imagine, upon
some other system which might have pre-
vailed for anything which our pathology
knows to the contrary, a lover addressing
his mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling,
"Madam, my liver and fortune are entirely
at your disposal"; or putting a delicate
question, " Amanda, have you a midriff to
157

ESSAYS OP ELIA

bestow?" But custom has settled these
things, and awarded the seat of sentiment
to the aforesaid triangle, while its less for-
tunate neighbors wait at animal and ana-
tomical distance.

Not many sounds in life, and I include all
urban and all rural sounds, exceed in in-
terest a knock at the door. It " gives a very-
echo to the throne where Hope is seated."
But its issues seldom answer to this oracle
within. It is so seldom that just the person
we want to see comes. But of all the clamo-
rous visitations the welcomest in expecta-
tion is the sound that ushers in, or seems
to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven
himself was hoarse that announced the
fatal entrance of Duncan, so the knock of
the postman on this day is light, airy, con-
fident, and befitting one that bringeth good
tidings. It is less mechanical than on other
days; you will say, "That is not the post, I
am sure." Visions of Love, of Cupids, of
Hymens! — delightful eternal common-
places, which "having been will always
be"; which no school-boy nor school-man
can write away; having your irreversible
throne in the fancy and affections— what
are your transports, when the happy maiden,
opening with careful finger, careful not to
break the emblematic seal, bursts upon the
158

VALENTINE'S DAY

sight of some well-designed allegory, some
type, some youthful fancy, not without
verses-
Lovers all,
A madrigal,

or some such device, not over-ahundant in
sense— young Love disclaims it,— and not
quite silly— something between wind and
water, a chorus where the sheep might al-
most join the shepherd, as they did, or as I
apprehend they did, in Arcadia.

All Valentines are not foolish; and I shall
not easily forget thine, my kind friend (if I

may have leave to call you so) E. B .

E. B. lived opposite a young maiden whom
he had often seen, unseen, from his parlor

window in C e Street. She was all joy-

ousness and innocence, and just of an age
to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of
a temper to bear the disappointment of
missing one with good humor. E. B. is an
artist of no common powers; in the fancy
parts of designing, perhaps inferior to none;
his name is known at the bottom of many
a well-executed vignette in the way of his
profession, but no further; for E. B. is mod-
est, and the world meets nobody half-way.
E. B. meditated how he could repay this
young maiden for many a favor which she
159

ESSAYS OF ELIA

had done him unknown; for when n kindly-
face greets us, though but passing by, and
never kni>ws us ngain, nor wo it, wo should
feel it as an obligation: and E. B. did. This
good artist set himself at work to please the
damsel. It was just before Valentino's day
throe years since. He wrought, unseen and
unsuspected, a w^ondrous worl<. We need
not say it was on the tlnest gilt paper with
borders— full, not of common hearts and
heartless allegory, but all the prettiest
stories of love from Ovid, and older poets
than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). There
was Pyranuis and Thisbe, and be sure Dido
was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, and
swans more than sang in Cayster, with mot-
tos and fanciful devices, such as beseemed
—a work, in short, of magic, h-is dipt the
woof. This on Valentine's eve he com-
mended to the all-swallowing indiscriminate
orifice— (O ignoble trust!)— of the common
post: but the humble medium did its duty,
and from his watchful stand the next morn-
ing he saw the cheerful messenger knock,
and by and by the precious charge delivered.
He saw, unseen, the happy girl unfold the
Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, as
one after one the pretty emblems unfolded
themselves. She danced about, not with
light love, or foolish expectations, for she
IGO

VALENTINE'S DAY

had no lover; or, if she had, none she knew
that could have created t?iose bright images
which delighted her. It was more like
some fairy present; a Godsend, as our fa-
miliarly inouH ancestors termed a benefit
received where the benefactor was unknown.
It would do her no harm. It would do her
good forever after. It is good to love the
unknown. I only give this as a specimen
of E. B. and his modest way of doing a con-
cealed kindness.

Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor
Ophelia; and no better wish, but with better
auspices, we wish to all faithful lovers, who
are not too wise to despise old legends, but
are content to rank themselves humble
diocesans of old Bishop Valentine and his
true church.

161

MY RELATIONS

I AM arrived at that point of life at which
a man may account it a blessing, as it is
a singularity, if he have either of his
parents surviving. I have not that felicity
—and sometimes think feelingly of a pas-
sage in Browne's Christian Morals, where he
speaks of a man that hath lived sixty or
seventy years in the world. "In such a
compass of time," he says, "a man may
have a close apprehension what it is to be
forgotten, when he hath lived to find none
who could remember his father, or scarcely
the friends of his youth, and may sensibly
see with what a face in no long time OB-
LIVION will look upon himself."

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She
was one whom single blessedness had soured
to the world. She often used to say, that I
was the only thing in it which she loved;
and, when she thought I was quitting it, she
grieved over me with mother's tears. A
partiality quite so exclusive my reason
cannot altogether approve. She was from
morning till night poring over good books
162

MY RELATIONS

and devotional exercises. Her favorite
volumes were, Thomas a Kempis, in Stan-
hope's translation; and a Roman Catholic
Prayer-book, with the matins and complins
regularly set down— terms which I was at
that time too young to understand. She
persisted in reading them, although ad-
monished daily concerning their Papistical
tendency; and went to church every Sab-
bath, as a good Protestant should do. These
were the only books she studied; though, I
think at one period of her life, she told me,
she had read with great satisfaction the
Adventures of an Unfortunate Young
Nobleman. Finding the door of the chapel
in Essex Street open one day— it was in the
infancy of that heresy— she went in, liked
the sermon, and the manner of worship, and
frequented it at intervals for some time
after. She came not for doctrinal points,
and never missed them. With some little
asperities in her constitution, which I have
above hinted at, she was a steadfast, friendly
being, and a fine old Christian. She was a
woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind
—extraordinary at a repartee; one of the
few occasions of her breaking silence— else
she did not much value wit. The only
secular employment I remember to have
seen her engaged in, was the splitting of
163

ESSAYS OF ELIA

French beans, and dropping them into a
china basin of fair water. The odor of those
tender vegetables to this day comes back
upon my sense, redolent of soothing recol-
lections. Certainly it is the most delicate
of culinary operations.

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I
had none— to remember. By the uncle's
side I may be said to have been born an
orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any
—to know them. A sister, I think, that
should have been Elizabeth, died in both
our infancies. What a comfort, or what a
care, may I not have missed in her!— But I
have cousins sprinkled about in Hertford-
shire—besides two, with whom I have been
all my life in habits of the closest intimacy,
and whom I may term cousins par excel-
lence. These are James and Bridget Elia.
They are older than myself by twelve, and
ten, years; and neither of them seems dis-
posed, in matters of advice and guidance,
to waive any of the prerogatives which
primogeniture confers. May they continue
still in the same mind; and when they shall
be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years
old (I cannot spare them sooner), persist in
treating me in my grand climacteric pre-
cisely as a stripling, or younger brother!

James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature
164

MY RELATIONS

hath her unities, which not every critic can
penetrate; or, if we feel, we cannot explain
them. The pen of Yorick, and of none since
his, could have drawn J. E. entire— those
fine Shandean lights and shades, which
make up his story. I must limp after in
my poor antithetical manner, as the fates
have given me grace and talent. J. E. then
—to the eye of a common observer at least
— seemeth made up of contradictory prin-
ciples. The genuine child of impulse, the
frigid philosopher of prudence— the phlegm
of my cousin's doctrine, is invariably at
war with his temperament, which is high
sanguine. With always some fire-new
project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic
opponent of innovation, and crier down of
everything that has not stood the test of
age and experiment. With a hundred fine
notions chasing one another hourly in his
fancy, he is startled at the least approach
to the romantic in others; and, determined
by his own sense in everything, commends
you to the guidance of common sense on
all occasions.— With a touch of the eccen-
tric in all which he does or says, he is only
anxious that you should not commit your-
self by doing anything absurd or singular.
On my once letting slip at table, that I was
not fond of a certain popular dish, he begged
165

ESSAYS OF ELIA

me at any rate not to say so— for the world
would think me mad. He disguises a pas-
sionate fondness for works of high art
(whereof he hath amassed a choice collec-
tion), under the pretext of buying only to
sell again— that his enthusiasm may give
no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were
so, why does that piece of tender, pastoral
Domenichino hang still by his wall?— is the
ball of his sight much more dear to him?—
or what picture-dealer can talk like him?

Whereas mankind in general are observed
to warp their speculative conclusions to the
bent of their individual humors, Ms theories
are sure to be in diametrical opposition
to his constitution. He is courageous as
Charles of Sweden, upon instinct; chary of
his person upon principle, as a traveling
Quaker. — He has been preaching up to me,
all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the
great— the necessity of forms, and man-
ners, to a man's getting on in the world.
He himself never aims at either, that I can
discover,— and has a spirit that would stand
upright in the presence of the Cham of
Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him dis-
course of patience— extolling it as the truest
wisdom— and to see him during the last
seven minutes that his dinner is getting
ready. Nature never ran up in her haste
166

MY RELATIONS

a more restless piece of workmanship than
when she molded this impetuous cousin—
and Art never turned out a more elaborate
orator than he can display himself to be,
upon his favorite topic of the advantages of
quiet and contentedness in the state, what-
ever it be, that we are placed in. He is tri-
umphant on this theme, when he has you
safe in one of those short stages that ply
for the western road, in a very obstructing
manner, at the foot of John Murray's Street
—where you get in when it is empty, and
are expected to wait till the vehicle hath
completed her just freight— a trying three
quarters of an hour to some people. He
wonders at your fidgetiness,— "where could
we be better than we are, thus sitting, thus
consulting ?"—" prefers, for his part, a state
of rest to locomotion,"— with an eye all the
while upon the coachman,— till at length,
waxing out of all patience, at your want of
it, he breaks out into a pathetic remon-
strance at the fellow for detaining us so
long over the time which he had professed,
and declares peremptorily, that "the gen-
tleman in the coach is determined to get
out, if he does not drive on that instant."
Very quick at inventing an argument, or
detecting a sophistry, he is incapable of
attending you in any chain of arguing. In-
167

ESSAYS OF ELIA

deed, he makes wild work with logic; and
seems to jump at most admirable conclu-
sions by some process not at all akin to it.
Consonantly enough to this, he hath been
heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that
there exists such a faculty at all in man as
7'eason ; and wondereth how man came first
to have a conceit of it— enforcing his nega-
tion with all the might of reasoning he is
master of. He has some speculative notions
against laughter, and will maintain that
laughing is not natural to Mtyi — when per-
adventure the next moment his lungs shall
crow like chanticleer. He says some of the
best things in the world— and declareth
that wit is his aversion. It was he who
said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in
their grounds— W/iai a pity to think that
these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will
all he changed into frivolous Members of
Parliament !

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestu-
ous—and in age he disco vereth no symptom
of cooling. This is that which I admire in
him. I hate people who meet Time half-
way. I am for no compromise with that
inevitable spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will
take his swing.— It does me good, as I walk
towards the street of my daily avocation, on
some fine May morning, to meet him march-
168

MY RELATIONS

ing in a quite opposite direction, with a jolly-
handsome presence, and shining sanguine
face, that indicates some purchase in his
eye— a Claude— or a Hohhema— for much of
his enviable leisure is consumed at Chris-
tie's and Phillips's— or where not, to pick
up pictures, and such gauds. On these
occasions he mostly stoppeth me, to read a
short lecture on the advantage a person like
me possesses above himself, in having his
time occupied with business which he must
do— assureth me that he often feels it hang
heavy on his hands— wishes he had fewer
holidays— and goes off— Westward Ho!—
chanting a tune, to Pall Mall— perfectly con-
vinced that he has convinced me— while I
proceed in my opposite direction tuneless.
It is pleasant, again, to see this Professor
of Indifference doing the honors of his new
purchase, when he has fairly housed it.
You must view it in every light, till he has
found the best— placing it at this distance,
and at that, but always suiting the focus of
your sight to his own. You must spy at it
through your fingers, to catch the aerial
perspective— though you assure him that
to you the landscape shows much more
agreeable without that artifice. Woe be to
the luckless wight who does not only not
respond to his rapture, but who should drop
169

ESSAYS OF ELIA

an unseasonable intimation of preferring
one of his anterior bargains to the present!
—The last is always his best hit— his "Cyn-
thia of the minute."— Alas! how many a
mild Madonna have I known to come in— a
Raphael!— keep its ascendancy for a few
brief moons— then, after certain intermedial
degradations, from the front drawing-room
to the back gallery, thence to the dark par-
lor,—adopted in turn by each of the Car-
racci, under successive lowering ascriptions
of filiation, mildly breaking its fall— con-
signed to the oblivious lumber-room, go out
at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo
Maratti!— which things when I beheld—
musing upon the chances and mutabilities
of fate below hath made me to reflect upon
the altered condition of great personages,
or that woeful Queen of Richard the Sec-
ond—

— set forth in pomp,

She came adornfed hither like sweet May ;

Sent back like Hallowmas or shortest day.

With great love for you, J. E. hath but a
limited sympathy with what you feel or do.
He lives in a world of his own, and makes
slender guesses at what passes in your
mind. He never pierces the marrow of your
habits. He will tell an old-established play-
170

MY RELATIONS

goer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so
(naming one of the theaters), is a very Hvely
comedian— as a piece of news! He adver-
tised me but the other day of some pleasant
green lanes which he had found out for me,
knowing me to be a great walker, in my own
immediate vicinity— who have haunted the
identical spot any time these twenty years!
—He has not much respect for that class of
feelings which goes by the name of senti-
mental. He applies the definition of real
evil to bodily sufferings exclusively— and
rejecteth all others as imaginary. He is
affected by the sight, or the bare supposi-
tion, of a creature in pain, to a degree which
I have never witnessed out of womankind.
A constitutional acuteness to this class of
sufferings may in part account for this.
The animal tribe in particular he taketh
under his especial protection. A broken-
winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find
an advocate in him. An overloaded ass is
his client forever. He is the apostle to the
brute kind— the never-failing friend of those
who have none to care for them. The con-
templation of a lobster boiled, or eels
skinned alive, will wring him so, that "all
for pity he could die." It will take the
savor from his palate, and the rest from
his pillow, for days and nights. With the
171

ESSAYS OP ELIA

intense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he
wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, and
unity of purpose, of that "true yokefellow
with Time," to have effected as much for
the Animal as he hath done for the Negro
Creation. But my uncontrollable cousin is
but imperfectly formed for purposes which
demand cooperation. He cannot wait. His
amelioration-plans must be ripened in a day.
For this reason he has cut but an equivocal
figure in benevolent societies, and combina-
tions for the alleviation of human suffer-
ings. His zeal constantly makes him to
outrun, and put out, his coadjutors. He
thinks of relieving,— while they think of
debating. He was blackballed out of a so-
ciety for the Relief of * * * * * because
the fervor of his humanity toiled beyond
the formal apprehension and creeping pro-
cesses of his associates. I shall always con-
sider this distinction as a patent of nobility
in the Elia family!

Do I mention these seeming inconsisten-
cies to smile at, or upbraid, my unique
cousin? Marry, heaven, and all good man-
ners, and the understanding that should be
between kinsfolk, forbid!— With all the
strangenesses of this strangest of the Elias
— I would not have him in one jot or tittle
other than he is; neither would I barter or
172

MY RELATIONS

exchange my wild kinsman for the most
exact, regular, and every way consistent
kinsman breathing.

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give
you some account of my cousin Bridget—
if you are not already surfeited with cousins
—and take you by the hand, if you are will-
ing to go with us, on an excursion which we
made a summer or two since, in search of
more cousins—

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertford-
shire.

173

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE

BRIDGET ELIA has been my house-
keeper for many a long year. I have
obligations to Bridget, extending^be-
yond the period of memory. We house
together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of
double singleness; with such tolerable com-
fort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find in
myself no sort of disposition to go out upon
the mountains, with the rash king's off-
spring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree
pretty well in our tastes and habits— yet so,
as "with a difference." We are generally
in harmony, with occasional bickerings— as
it should be among near relations. Our
sympathies are rather understood than ex-
pressed; and once, upon my dissembling a
tone in my voice more kind than ordinary,
my cousin burst into tears, and complained
that I was altered. We are both great
readers in different directions. While I am
hanging over (for the thousandth time)
some passage in old Burton, or one of his
strange contemporaries, she is abstracted in
some modern tale or adventure, whereof
174

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE

our common reading-table is daily fed
with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative
teases me. I have little concern in the
progress of events. She must have a story
—well, ill, or indifferently told— so there be
life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil
accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in
fiction — and almost in real life— have ceased
to interest, or operate but dully upon me.
Out-of-the-way humors and opinions—
heads with some diverting twist in them—
the oddities of authorship, please me most.
My cousin has a native disrelish of anything
that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes
down with her that is quaint, irregular, or
out of the road of common sympathy. She
" holds Nature more clever." I can pardon
her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of
the Religio Medici; but she must apologize
to me for certain disrespectful insinuations,
which she has been pleased to throw out
latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear
favorite of mine, of the last century but one
—the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but
again somewhat fantastical and original-
brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener
perhaps than I could have wished, to have
had for her associates and mine, free-think-
ers—leaders, and disciples, of novel philoso-
175

ESSAYS OP ELIA

phies and systems; but she neither wrangles
with, nor accepts, their opinions. That
which was good and venerable to her, when
a child, retains its authority over her mind
still. She never juggles or plays tricks
with her understanding.

We are both of us inclined to be a little
too positive; and I have observed the result
of our disputes to be almost uniformly this
—that in matters of fact, dates, and cir-
cumstances, it turns out that I was in the
right, and my cousin in the wrong. But
where we have differed upon moral points;
upon something proper to be done, or let
alone; whatever heat of opposition or steadi-
ness of conviction I set out with, I am sure
always, in the long run, to be brought over
to her way of thinking.

I must touch upon the foibles of my kins-
woman with a gentle hand, for Bridget does
not like to be told of her faults. She hath
an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of
reading in company: at which times she
will answer yes or no to a question, without
fully understanding its purport— which is
provoking, and derogatory in the highest
degree to the dignity of the putter of the
said question. Her presence of mind is
equal to the most pressing trials of life, but
will sometimes desert her upon trifling
176

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE

occasions. When the purpose requires it,
and is a thing of moment, she can speak
to it greatly; but in matters which are
not stuff of the conscience, she hath been
known sometimes to let slip a word less
seasonably.

Her education in youth was not much
attended to; and she happily missed all that
train of female garniture which passeth by
the name of accomplishments. She was
tumbled early, by accident or design, into a
spacious closet of good old English reading,
without much selection or prohibition, and
browsed at will upon that fair and whole-
some pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they
should be brought up exactly in this fashion.
I know not whether their chance in wedlock
might not be diminished by it, but I can
answer for it that it makes (if the worst
come to the worst) most incomparable old
maids.

In a season of distress, she is the truest
comforter; but in the teasing accidents and
minor perplexities, which do not call out
the will to meet them, she sometimes
maketh matters worse by an excess of par-
ticipation. If she does not always divide
your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions
of life she is sure always to treble your
satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a

12 irjrj

ESSAYS OF ELIA

play with, or upon a visit; but best, when
she goes a journey with you.

We made an excursion together a few
summers since into Hertfordshire, to beat
up the quarters of some of our less-known
relations in that fine corn country.

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery
End, or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps
more properly, in some old maps of Hert-
fordshire; a farm-house,— delightfully situ-
ated within a gentle walk from Wheathamp-
stead. I can just remember having been
there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was
a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as I
have said, is older than myself by some ten
years. I wish that I could throw into a
heap the remainder of our joint existences,
that we might share them in equal division.
But that is impossible. The house was at
that time in the occupation of a substantial
yeoman, who had married my grand-
mother's sister. His name was Gladman.
My grandmother was a Bruton, married to
a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons
are still flourishing in that part of the
county, but the Fields are almost extinct.
More than forty years had elapsed since the
visit I speak of; and, for the greater portion
of that period, we had lost sight of the
other two branches also. Who or what
178

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE

sort of persons inherited Mackery End—
kindred or strange folk— we were afraid
almost to conjecture, but determined some
day to explore.

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking
the noble park at Luton in our way from
St. Albans, we arrived at the spot of our
anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of
the old farm-house, though every trace of
it was effaced from my recollections, affected
me with a pleasure which I had not experi-
enced for many a year. For though / had
forgotten it, we had never forgotten being
there together, and we had been talking
about Mackery End all our lives, till memory
on my part became mocked with a phantom
of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect
of a place which, when present, 0 how un-
like it was to that which I had conjured up
so many times instead of it!

Still the air breathed balmily about it; the
season was in the "heart of June," and I
could say with the poet.

But thou, that didst appear so fair

To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day

Her delicate creation !

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than
mine, for she easily remembered her old
179

ESSAYS OF ELIA

acquaintance again— some altered features,
of course, a little grudged at. At first, in-
deed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy;
but the scene soon reconfirmed itself in her
aflfections— and she traversed every outpost
of the old mansion, to the woodhouse, the
orchard, the place where the pigeon-house
had stood (house and birds were alike flown)
—with a breathless impatience of recogni-
tion, which was more pardonable perhaps
than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But
Bridget in some things is behind her years.
The only thing left was to get into the
house— and that was a difficulty which to
me singly would have been insurmountable;
for I am terribly shy in making myself
known to strangers and out-of-date kins-
folk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged
my cousin in without me; but she soon re-
turned with a creature that might have sat
to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It
was the youngest of the Gladmans; who,
by marriage with a Bruton, had become
mistress of the old mansion. A comely
brood are the Brutons. Six of them, fe-
males, were noted as the handsomest young
women in the county. But this adopted
Bruton, in my mind, was better than they
all— more comely. She was born too late
to have remembered me. She just recol-
180

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE

lected in early life to have had her cousin
Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a
stile. But the name of kindred and of cousin-
ship was enough. Those slender ties, that
prove slight as gossamer in the rending
atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as
we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hert-
fordshire. In five minutes we were as thor-
oughly acquainted as if we had been born
and bred up together; were familiar, even
to the calling each other by our Christian
names. So Christians should call one an-
other. To have seen Bridget and her— it
was like the meeting of the two scriptural
cousins! There was a grace and dignity,
an amplitude of form and stature, answer-
ing to her mind, in this farmer's wife, which
would have shined in a palace— or so we
thought it. We were made welcome by
husband and wife equally— we, and our
friend that was with us.— I had almost for-
gotten him— but B. F. will not so soon
forget that meeting, if peradventure he
shall read this on the far-distant shores
where the kangaroo haunts. The fatted
calf was made ready, or rather was already
so, as if in anticipation of our coming; and
after an appropriate glass of native wine,
never let me forget with what honest pride
this hospitable cousin made us proceed to
181

ESSAYS OF ELIA

Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some
new-found rarity) to her mother and sister
Gladmans, who did indeed know something
more of us, at a time when she almost knew
nothing.— With what corresponding kind-
ness we were received by them also— how
Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion,
warmed into a thousand half-obliterated
recollections of things and persons, to my
utter astonishment, and her own— and to
the astoundment of B. F., who sat by, almost
the only thing that was not a cousin there,
—old effaced images of more than half-
forgotten names and circumstances still
crowding back upon her, as words written
in lemon come out upon exposure to a
friendly warmth,— when I forget all this,
then may my country cousins forget me;
and Bridget no more remember that in the
days of weakling infancy I was her tender
charge— as I have been her care in foolish
manhood since— in those pretty pastoral
walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in
Hertfordshire.

182

MY FIRST PLAY

AT the north end of Cross Court there
/\ yet stands a portal, of some archi-
J^\. tectural pretensions, though reduced
to humble use, serving at present for an
entrance to a printing-office. This old door-
way, if you are young, reader, you may not
know was the identical pit entrance to old
Drury— Garrick's Drury— all of it that is
left. I never pass it without shaking some
forty years from off my shoulders, recurring
to the evening when I passed through it to
see my first play. The afternoon had been
wet, and the condition of our going (the
elder folks and myself) was, that the rain
should cease. With what a beating heart
did I watch from the window the puddles,
from the stillness of which I was taught to
prognosticate the desired cessation ! I seem
to remember the last spurt, and the glee
with which I ran to announce it.

We went with orders, which my godfather

P. had sent us. He kept the oil-shop (now

Davies's) at the corner of Featherstone-

buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave

183

ESSAYS OF ELIA

person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions
above his rank. He associated in those days
with John Palmer, the comedian, whose
gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if John
(which is quite as likely) did not rather
borrow somewhat of his manner from my
godfather. He was also known to and
visited by Sheridan. It was to his house in
Holborn that young Brinsley brought his
first wife on her elopement with him from
a boarding-school at Bath— the beautiful
Maria Linley. My parents were present
(over a quadrille-table) when he arrived in
the evening with his harmonious charge.
From either of these connections it may be
inferred that my godfather could command
an order for the then Drury Lane theater at
pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue
of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy
autograph, I have heard him say was the
sole remuneration which he had received
for many years' nightly illumination of the
orchestra and various avenues of that
theater— and he was content it should be
so. The honor of Sheridan's familiarity —
or supposed familiarity— was better to my
godfather than money.

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen;
grandiloquent, yet courteous. His delivery
of the commonest matters of fact was Cice-
184

MY FIRST PLAY

ronian. He had two Latin words almost
constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds
Latin from an oilman's lips!), which my
better knowledge since has enabled me to
correct. In strict pronunciation they should
have been sounded vice versa— but in those
young years they impressed me with more
awe than they would now do, read aright
from Seneca or Varro— in his own peculiar
pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated,
or Anglicized, into something like verse
verse. By an imposing manner, and the
help of these distorted syllables, he climbed
(but that was little) to the highest parochial
honors which St. Andrew's has to bestow.
He is dead— and thus much I thought due
to his memory, both for my first orders
(little wondrous talismans!— slight keys,
and insignificant to outward sight, but open-
ing to me more than Arabian paradises I
and, moreover, that by his testamentary
beneficence I came into possession of the
only landed property which I could ever call
my own — situate near the roadway village
of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire.
When I journeyed down to take possession,
and planted foot on my own ground, the
stately habits of the donor descended upon
me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity?)
with larger paces over my allotment of
185

ESSAYS OF ELIA

three quarters of an acre, with its commo-
dious mansion in the midst, with the feehng
of an English freeholder that all betwixt
sky and center was my own. The estate
has passed into more prudent hands, and
nothing but an agrarian can restore it.

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew
the uncomfortable manager who abolished
them!— with one of these we went. I re-
member the waiting at the door— not that
which is left— but between that and an
inner door in shelter— 0 when shall I be
such an expectant again!— with the cry of
nonpareils, an indispensable playhouse ac-
companiment in those days. As near as I
can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation
of the theatrical fruiteresses then was,
"Chase some oranges, chase some numpa-
rels, chase a bill of the play";— chase pro
choose. But when we got in, and I beheld
the green curtain that veiled a heaven to
my imagination, which was soon to be dis-
closed—the breathless anticipations I en-
dured! I had seen something like it in the
plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in
Rowe's Shakspere— the tent scene with
Diomede— and a sight of that plate can al-
ways bring back in a measure the feeling of
that evening.— The boxes at that time, full
of well-dressed women of quality, projected
186

MY FIRST PLAY

over the pit; and the pilasters reaching
down were adorned with a glistering sub-
stance (I know not what) under glass (as it
seemed), resembling— a homely fancy— but
I judged it to be sugar-candy— yet to my
raised imagination, divested of its homelier
qualities, it appeared a glorified candy!—
The orchestra lights at length arose, those
"fair Auroras!" Once the bell sounded.
It was to ring out yet once again— and,
incapable of the anticipation, I reposed
my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon
the maternal lap. It rang the second
time. The curtain drew up— I was not
past six years old, — and the play was Ar-
taxerxes!

I had dabbled a little in the Universal
History— the ancient part of it— and here
was the court of Persia.— It was being ad-
mitted to a sight of the past. I took no
proper interest in the action going on, for
I understood not its import— but I heard
the word Darius, and I was in the midst of
Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision.
Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, prin-
cesses, passed before me. I knew not
players. I was in Persepolis for the time,
and the burning idol of their devotion
almost converted me into a worshiper. I
was awe-struck, and believed those signifi-
187

ESSAYS OF ELIA

cations to be something more than ele-
mental fires. It was all enchantment and
a dream. No such pleasure has since
visited me but in dreams.— Harlequin's
invasion followed; where, I remember, the
transformation of the magistrates into
reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of
grave historic justice, and the tailor carry-
ing hisjown head to be as sober a verity as
the legend of St. Denys.

The next play to which I was taken was
the Lady of the Manor, of which, with the
exception of some scenery, very faint traces
are left in my memory. It was followed by
a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric
touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long
since dead— but to my apprehension (too
sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a
piece of antiquity as Lud— the father of a
line of Harlequins— transmitting his dagger
of lath (the wooden scepter) through count-
less ages. I saw the primeval Motley come
from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of
white patchwork, like the apparition of a
dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I)
look when they are dead.

My third play followed in quick succes-
sion. It was the Way of the World. I
think I must have sat at it as grave as a
judge; for I remember the hysteric affecta-
188

MY FIRST PLAY

tions of good Lady Wishfort affected me
like some solemn tragic passion. Robinson
Crusoe followed; in which Crusoe, man
Friday, and the parrot, were as good and
authentic as in the story.— The clownery
and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have
clean passed out of my head. I believe,
I no more laughed at them, than at the
same age I should have been disposed to
laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads (seem-
ing to me then replete with devout mean-
ing) that gape and grin, in stone around the
inside of the old Round Church (my church)
of the Templars.

I saw these plays in the season 1781-2,
when I was from six to seven years old.
After the intervention of six or seven other
years (for at school all playgoing was in-
hibited) I again entered the doors of a
theater. That old Artaxerxes evening had
never done ringing in my fancy. I expected
the same feelings to come again with the
same occasion. But we differ from our-
selves less at sixty and sixteen, than the
latter does from six. In that interval what
had I not lost! At the first period I knew
nothing, understood nothing, discriminated
nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all—

Was nourished, I could not tell how—
189

ESSAYS OF ELIA

I had left the temple a devotee, and was
returned a rationalist. The same things
were there materially; but the emblem, the
reference, was gone!— The green curtain
was no longer a veil, drawn between two
worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring
back past ages, to present a " royal ghost,"
—but a certain quantity of green baize,
which was to separate the audience for a
given time from certain of their fellow-men
who were to come forward and pretend
those parts. The lights— the orchestra
lights— came up a clumsy machinery. The
first ring, and the second ring, was now but
a trick of the prompter's bell— which had
been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom
of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which
ministered to its warning. The actors were
men and women painted. I thought the
fault was in them; but it was in myself, and
the alteration which those many centuries
—of six short twelvemonths— had wrought
in me.— Perhaps it was fortunate for me
that the play of the evening was but an
indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to
crop some unreasonable expectations, which
might have interfered with the genuine
emotions with which I was soon after en-
abled to enter upon the first appearance to
me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison
190

MY FIRST PLAY

and retrospection soon yielded to the pres-
ent attraction of the scene; and the theater
became to me, upon a new stock, the most
delightful of recreations.

191

MODERN GALLANTRY

IN comparing modern with ancient man-
ners, we are pleased to compliment our-
selves upon the point of gallantry; a
certain obsequiousness, or deferential re-
spect, which we are supposed to pay to
females, as females.

I shall believe that this principle actuates
our conduct, when I can forget, that in the
nineteenth century of the era from which
we date our civility, we are but just begin-
ning to leave off the very frequent practice
of whipping females in public, in common
with the coarsest male offenders.

I shall believe it to be influential, when I
can shut my eyes to the fact that in Eng-
land women are still occasionally— hanged.

I shall believe in it, when actresses are
no longer subject to be hissed off a stage
by gentlemen.

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant
hands a fishwife across the kennel; or as-
sists the apple-woman to pick up her wan-
dering fruit, which some unlucky dray has
just dissipated.

192

MODERN GALLANTRY

I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants
in humbler life, who would be thought in
their way notable adepts in this refinement,
shall act upon it in places where they are
not known, or think themselves not ob-
served—when I shall see the traveler for
some rich tradesman part with his admired
box-coat, to spread it over the defenseless
shoulders of the poor woman, who is pass-
ing to her parish on the roof of the same
stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain
—when I shall no longer see a woman stand-
ing up in the pit of a London theater, till
she is sick and faint with the exertion, with
men about her, seated at their ease, and
jeering at her distress; till one, that seems
to have more manners or conscience than
the rest, significantly declares "she should
be welcome to his seat, if she were a little
younger and handsomer." Place this dap-
per warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle
of their own female acquaintance, and you
shall confess you have not seen a politer-
bred man in Lothbury.

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there
is some such principle influencing our con-
duct, when more than one half of the drudg-
ery and coarse servitude of the world shall
cease to be performed by women.

Until that day comes I shall never believe
13 193

ESSAYS OF ELIA

this boasted point to be anything more than
a conventional fiction; a pageant got up
between the sexes, in a certain rank, and
at a certain time of life, in which both find
their account equally.

I shall be even disposed to rank it among
the salutary fictions of life, when in polite
circles I shall see the same attentions paid
to age as to youth, to homely features as to
handsome, to coarse complexions as to
clear— to the woman, as she is a woman,
not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title.

I shall believe it to be something more
than a name, when a well-dressed gentle-
man in a well-dressed company can advert
to the topic of female old age without ex-
citing, and intending to excite, a sneer:—
when the phrases "antiquated virginity,"
and such a one has " overstood her market,"
pronounced in good company, shall raise
immediate offense in man, or woman, that
shall hear them spoken.

Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, mer-
chant, and one of the Directors of the South
Sea Company— the same to whom Edwards,
the Shakspere commentator, has addressed
a fine sonnet— was the only pattern of con-
sistent gallantry I have met with. He took
me under his shelter at an early age, and
bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to
194

MODERN GALLANTRY

his precepts and example whatever there is
of the man of business (and that is not
much) in my composition. It was not his
fault that I did not profit more. Though
bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a mer-
chant, he was the finest gentleman of his
time. He had not one system of attention
to females in the drawing-room, and another
in the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean
that he made no distinction. But he never
lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the
casualties of a disadvantageous situation.
I have seen him stand bareheaded— smile
if you please— to a poor servant-girl, while
she has been inquiring of him the way to
some street— in such a posture of unforced
civility, as neither to embarrass her in the
acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it.
He was no dangler, in the common accepta-
tion of the word, after women; but he rever-
enced and upheld, in every form in which
it came before him, womanhood. I have
seen him — nay, smile not— tenderly escort-
ing a market-woman, whom he had encoun-
tered in a shower, exalting his umbrella
over her poor basket of fruit, that it might
receive no damage, with as much careful-
ness as if she had been a countess. To the
reverend form of Female Eld he would yield
the wall (though it were to an ancient beg-
195

ESSAYS OF ELIA

gar-woman) with more ceremony than we
can afford to show our grandams. He was
the Preux Chevaher of Age; the Sir Calidore,
or Sir Tristan, to those who have no Cah-
dores or Tristans to defend them. The
roses, that had long faded thence, still
bloomed for him in those withered and
yellow cheeks.

He was never married, but in his youth
he paid his addresses to the beautiful Susan
Winstanley— old Winstanley's daughter of
Clapton— who dying in the early days of
their courtship, confirmed in him the reso-
lution of perpetual bachelorship. It was
during their short courtship, he told me,
that he had been one day treating his mis-
tress with a prof usion of civil speeches— the
common gallantries— to which kind of thing
she had hitherto manifested no repugnance
—but in this instance with no effect. He
could not obtain from her a decent acknow-
ledgment in return. She rather seemed to
resent his compliments. He could not set
it down to caprice, for the lady had always
shown herself above that littleness. When
he ventured on the following day, finding
her a little better humored, to expostulate
with her on her coldness of yesterday, she
confessed, with her usual frankness, that
she had no sort of dislike to his attentions;
196

MODERN GALLANTRY

that she could even endure some high-
flown compHments; that a young woman
placed in her situation had a right to expect
all sorts of civil things said to her; that she
hoped she could digest a dose of adulation,
short of insincerity, with as little injury to
her humility as most young women; hut
that— a little before he had commenced his
compliments— she had overheard him by
accident, in rather rough language, rating
a young woman, who had not brought home
his cravats quite to the appointed time, and
she thought to herself, " As I am Miss Susan
Winstanley, and a young lady— a reputed
beauty, and known to be a fortune— I can
have my choice of the finest speeches from
the mouth of this very fine gentleman who
is courting me— but if I had been poor Mary
Such-a-one (naming the milliner),— and had
failed of bringing home the cravats to the
appointed hour— though perhaps I had sat
up half the night to forward them— what
sort of compliments should I have received
then?— And my woman's pride came to
my assistance; and I thought, that if it
were only to do me honor, a female,
like myself, might have received hand-
somer usage; and I was determined not to
accept any fine speeches to the compro-
mise of that sex, the belonging to which
197

ESSAYS OP ELIA

was after all my strongest claim and title
to them."

I think the lady discovered both generos-
ity, and a just way of thinking, in this re-
buke which she gave her lover; and I have
sometimes imagined, that the uncommon
strain of courtesy, which through life regu-
lated the actions and behavior of my friend
towards all of womankind indiscriminately,
owed its happy origin to this seasonable
lesson from the lips of his lamented mis-
tress.

I wish the whole female world would
entertain the same notion of these things
that Miss Winstanley showed. Then we
should see something of the spirit of con-
sistent gallantry; and no longer witness the
anomaly of the same man— a pattern of
true politeness to a wife— of cold contempt,
or rudeness, to a sister— the idolater of his
female mistress— the disparager and de-
spiser of his no less female aunt, or unfor-
tunate—still female— maiden cousin. Just
so much respect as a woman derogates from
her own sex, in whatever condition placed
— her handmaid, or dependent — she de-
serves to have diminished from herself on
that score; and probably will feel the diminu-
tion, when youth, and beauty, and advan-
tages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose
198

MODERN GALLANTRY

of their attraction. What a woman should
demand of a man in courtship, or after it,
is first— respect for her as she is a woman;
—and next to that— to Tbe respected by him
above all other women. But let her stand
upon her female character as upon a foun-
dation; and let the attentions, incident to
individual preference, be so many pretty
additaments and ornaments— as many, and
as fanciful, as you please— to that main
structure. Let her first lesson be with
sweet Susan Winstanley— to reverence her
sex.

199

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE
INNER TEMPLE

I WAS born, and passed the first seven
years of my life, in the Temple. Its
church, its halls, its gardens, its foun-
tains, its river, I had almost said— for in
those young years, what was this king of
rivers to me hut a stream that watered our
pleasant places?— these are of my oldest
recollections. I repeat, to this day, no
verses to myself more frequently, or with
kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser,
where he speaks of this spot:—

There when they came, whereas those bricky

towers,
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth

ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their

bowers,
There whylome wont the Templer knights to

bide,
Till they decayed through pride.

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the
metropolis. What a transition for a coun-
tryman visiting London for the first time—
the passing from the crowded Strand or
200

OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE

Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into
its magnificent ample squares, its classic
green recesses! What a cheerful, liberal
look hath that portion of it, which, from
three sides, overlooks the greater garden;
that goodly pile

Of building strong, albeit of Paper bight,

confronting with massy contrast the
lighter, older, more fantastically shrouded
one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful
Crown Office Row (place of my kindly en-
gendure), right opposite the stately stream,
which washes the garden-foot with her yet
scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems
but just weaned from her Twickenham
Naiades! a man would give something to
have been born in such places. What a
collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan
hall, where the fountain plays, which I have
made to rise and fall, how many times! to
the astoundment of the young urchins,
my contemporaries, who, not being able to
guess at its recondite machinery, were al-
most tempted to hail the wondrous work as
magic! What an antique air had the now
almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral
inscriptions, seeming coevals with that
Time which they measured, and to take
201

ESSAYS OF ELIA

their revelations of its flight immediately
from heaven, holding correspondence with
the fountain of light! How would the dark
line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the
eye of childhood, eager to detect its move-
ment, never catched, nice as an evanescent
cloud, or the first arrests of sleep!

Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial hand

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived !

What a dead thing is a clock, with its
ponderous embowelments of lead and brass,
its pert or solemn dullness of communica-
tion, compared with the simple altar-like
structure and silent heart-language of the
old dial! It stood as the garden god of
Christian gardens. Why is it almost every-
where vanished? If its business use be
superseded by more elaborate inventions,
its moral uses, its beauty, might have
pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of
moderate labors, of pleasures not protracted
after sunset, of temperance, and good hours.
It was the primitive clock, the horologe of
the first world. Adam could scarce have
missed it in Paradise. It was the measure
appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to
spring by, for the birds to apportion their
silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture
202

OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE

and be led to fold by. The shepherd " carved
it out quaintly in the sun"; and, turning
philosopher by the very occupation, pro-
vided it with mottos more touching than
tombstones. It was a pretty device of the
gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the
days of artificial gardening, made a dial out
of herbs and flowers. I must quote his
verses a little higher up, for they are full,
as all his serious poetry was, of a witty
delicacy. They will not come in awkwardly,
I hope, in a talk of fountains and sun-dials.
He is speaking of sweet garden scenes:—

What wondrous life is this I lead !
Ripe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine.
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that ocean, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these.
Far other worlds and other seas ;
Annihilating all that 's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside.
My soul into the boughs does glide ;

203

ESSAYS OF ELIA

There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight.
Waves in its plumes the various light.
How well the skilful gardener drew
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run :
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers? ^

The artificial fountains of the metropohs
are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most
of them are dried up or hricked over. Yet,
where one is left, as in that little green
nook behind the South Sea House, what a
freshness it gives to the dreary pile! Four
little winged marble boys used to play their
virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh
streams from their innocent-wanton lips in
the square of Lincoln's Inn, when I was no
bigger than they were figured. They are
gone, and the spring choked up. The fash-
ion, they tell me, is gone by, and these
things are esteemed childish. Why not,
then, gratify children, by letting them
stand? Lawyers, I suppose, were children
once. They are awakening images to them
at least. Why must everything smack of

1 From a copy of verses entitled " The Garden,"

204

OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE

man, and mannish? Is the world all grown
up? Is childhood dead? Or is there not in
the bosoms of the wisest and the best some
of the child's heart left, to respond to its
earliest enchantments? The figures were
grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged living fig-
ures, that still flitter and chatter about that
area, less Gothic in appearance? or is the
splutter of their hot rhetoric one half so re-
freshing and innocent as the little cool play-
ful streams those exploded cherubs uttered?

They have lately Gothicized the entrance
to the Inner Temple hall, and the library
front; to assimilate them, I suppose, to the
body of the hall, which they do not at all
resemble. What is become of the winged
horse that stood over the former? a stately
arms! and who has removed those frescos
of the Virtues, which Italianized the end of
the Paper-buildings?— my first hint of alle-
gory! They must account to me for these
things, which I miss so greatly.

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used
to call the parade; but the traces are passed
away of the footsteps which made its pave-
ment awful! It is become common and
profane. The old benchers had it almost
sacred to themselves, in the fore part of
the day at least. They might not be sided
or jostled. Their air and dress asserted the
205

ESSAYS OF ELIA

parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you
when you passed them. We walk on even
terms with their successors. The roguish

eye of J 11, ever ready to he delivered of

a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a
repartee with it. But what insolent familiar
durst have mated Thomas Coventry?—
whose person was a quadrate, his step
massy and elephantine, his face square as
the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-
keeping, indivertible from his way as a
moving column, the scarecrow of his in-
feriors, the browbeater of equals and su-
periors, who made a solitude of children
wherever he came, for they fled his insuffer-
able presence, as they would have shunned
an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder
in their ears, whether he spake to them in
mirth or in rebuke; his invitatory notes
being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive and
horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the
natural terrors of his speech, broke from
each majestic nostril, darkening the air.
He took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at
once,— diving for it under the mighty flaps
of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his
waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark
rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by
adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold.
And so he paced the terrace.
206

OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE

By his side a milder form was sometimes
to be seen; the pensive gentility of Samuel
Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing
but that and their benchership in common.
In politics Salt was a Whig, and Coventry a
stanch Tory. Many a sarcastic growl did
the latter cast out— for Coventry had a
rough spinous humor— at the political con-
federates of his associate, which rebounded
from the gentle bosom of the latter like
cannon-balls from wool. You could not
ruffle Samuel Salt.

S. had the reputation of being a very
clever man, and of excellent discernment in
the chamber practice of the law. I suspect
his knowledge did not amount to much.
When a case of difficult disposition of
money, testamentary or otherwise, came
before him, he ordinarily handed it over,
with a few instructions, to his man Lovel,
who was a quick little fellow, and would
despatch it out of hand by the light of natu-
ral understanding, of which he had an un-
common share. It was incredible what
repute for talents S. enjoyed by the mere
trick of gravity. He was a shy man; a child
might pose him in a minute— indolent and
procrastinating to the last degree. Yet
men would give him credit for vast appli-
cation, in spite of himself. He was not
207

ESSAYS OF ELIA

to be trusted with himself with impunity.
He never dressed for a dinner-party but he
forgot his sword— they wore swords then—
or some other necessary part of his equi-
page. Lovel had his eye upon him on all
these occasions, and ordinarily gave him
his cue. If there was anything which he
could speak unseasonably, he was sure to
do it.— He was to dine at a relative's of the
unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her
execution;— and L., who had a wary fore-
sight of his probable hallucinations, before
he set out schooled him, with great anxiety,
not in any possible manner to allude to her
story that day. S. promised faithfully to
observe the injunction. He had not been
seated in the parlor, where the company
was expecting the dinner summons, four
minutes, when, a pause in the conversation
ensuing, he got up, looked out of window,
and pulling down his ruffles— an ordinary
motion with him— observed, "it was a
gloomy day," and added, " Miss Blandy must
be hanged by this time, I suppose." In-
stances of this sort were perpetual. Yet
S. was thought by some of the greatest
men of his time a fit person to be consulted,
not alone in matters pertaining to the law,
but in the ordinary niceties and embarrass-
ments of conduct— from force of manner
208

OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE

entirely. He never laughed. He had the
same good fortune among the female world,
—was a known toast with the ladies, and
one or two are said to have died for love of
him— I suppose, because he never trifled or
talked gallantly with them, or paid them,
indeed, hardly common attentions. He had
a fine face and person, but wanted, me-
thought, the spirit that should have shown
them off with advantage to the women.
His eye lacked luster.— Not so, thought

Susan P ; who, at the advanced age of

sixty, was seen, in the cold evening-time,
unaccompanied, wetting the pavement of

B d Row, with tears that fell in drops

which might be heard, because her friend
had died that day— he, whom she had pur-
sued with a hopeless passion for the last
forty years— a passion which years could
not extinguish or abate; nor the long-re-
solved, yet gently enforced, puttings off of
unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its

cherished purpose. Mild Susan P , thou

hast now thy friend in heaven!

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the
noble family of that name. He passed his
youth in contracted circumstances, which
gave him early those parsimonious habits
which in after life never forsook him; so
that with one windfall or another, about
^* 209

ESSAYS OP ELIA

the time I knew him, he was master of four
or five hundred thousand pounds; nor did
he look or walk worth a moidore less. He
lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump
in Serjeant's Inn, Fleet Street. J., the
counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in
it, for what reason I divine not, at this day.
C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray,
where he seldom spent above a day or two
at a time in the summer; but preferred,
during the hot months, standing at his
window in this damp, close, well-like man-
sion, to watch, as he said, " the maids draw-
ing water all day long." I suspect he had
his within-door reasons for the preference.
Hie eurrus et armafuere. He might think
his treasures more safe. His house had the
aspect of a strong box. C. was a close
hunks— a hoarder rather than a miser— or,
if a miser, none of the mad Elwes breed,
who have brought discredit upon a char-
acter which cannot exist without certain
admirable points of steadiness and unity of
purpose. One may hate a true miser, but
cannot, I suspect, so easily despise him.
By taking care of the pence he is often
enabled to part with the pounds, upon a
scale that leaves us careless generous fel-
lows halting at an immeasurable distance
behind, C. gave away 30,000 Z. at once in
210

OLD BENCHERS OP INNER TEMPLE

his lifetime to a blind charity. His house-
keeping was severely looked after, hut he
kept the table of a gentleman. He would
know who came in and who went out of his
house, hut his kitchen chimney was never
suffered to freeze.

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all—
never knew what he was worth in the world;
and having but a competency for his rank,
which his indolent habits were little calcu-
lated to improve, might have suffered se-
verely if he had not had honest people about
him. Lovel took care of everything. He
was at once his clerk, his good servant, his
dresser, his friend, his "flapper," his guide,
stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. He did no-
thing without consulting Lovel, or failed
in anything without expecting and fearing
his admonishing. He put himself almost
too much in his hands, had they not been
the purest in the world. He resigned his
title almost to respect as a master, if L.
could ever have forgotten for a moment
that he was a servant.

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an
incorrigible and losing honesty. A good
fellow withal, and "would strike." In the
cause of the oppressed he never considered
inequalities, or calculated the number of
his opponents. He once wrested a sword
211

ESSAYS OP ELIA

out of the hand of a man of quality that
had drawn upon him, and pommeled him
severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman
had offered insult to a female— an occasion
upon which no odds against him could have
prevented the interference of Lovel. He
would stand next day bareheaded to the
same person modestly to excuse his inter-
ference—for L. never forgot rank where
something better was not concerned. L.
was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had
a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was
said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait
of him which confirms it), possessed a fine
turn for humorous poetry— next to Swift
and Prior— molded heads in clay or plaster
of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural
genius merely; turned cribbage-boards, and
such small cabinet toys, to perfection; took
a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal
facility; made punch better than any man
of his degree in England; had the merriest
quips and conceits; and was altogether as
brimful of rogueries and inventions as you
could desire. He was a brother of the
angle, moreover, and just such a free,
hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak
Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing
with. I saw him in his old age and the
decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the
212

OLD BENCHERS OP INNER TEMPLE

last sad stage of human weakness— "a rem-
nant most forlorn of what he was,"— yet
even then his eye would light up upon the
mention of his favorite Garrick. He was
greatest, he would say, in Bayes— " was upon
the stage nearly throughout the whole per-
formance, and as busy as a bee." At inter-
vals, too, he would speak of his former life,
and how he came up a little boy from Lin-
coln, to go to service, and how his mother
cried at parting with him, and how he re-
turned, after some few years' absence, in
his smart new livery, to see her, and she
blest herself at the change, and could hardly
be brought to believe that it was " her own
bairn." And then, the excitement subsid-
ing, he would weep, till I have wished that
sad second-childhood might have a mother
still to lay its head upon her lap. But the
common mother of us all in no long time
after received him gently into hers.

With Coventry and with Salt, in their
walks upon the terrace, most commonly
Peter Pier son would join to make up a third.
They did not walk linked arm in arm in
those days— "as now our stout triumvirs
sweep the streets,"— but generally with
both hands folded behind them for state,
or with one at least behind, the other carry-
ing a cane. P. was a benevolent, but not a
213

ESSAYS OP ELIA

prepossessing man. He had that in his face
which you could not term unhappiness; it
rather implied an incapacity of being happy.
His cheeks were colorless, even to white-
ness. His look was uninviting, resembling
(but without his sourness) that of our great
philanthropist. I know that he did good
acts, but I could never make out what he
was. Contemporary with these, but sub-
ordinate, was Daines Barrington— another
oddity— he walked burly and square— in
imitation, I think, of Coventry— howbeit he
attained not to the dignity of his prototype.
Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon the
strength of being a tolerable antiquarian,
and having a brother a bishop. When the
account of his year's treasurership came to
be audited, the following singular charge
was unanimously disallowed by the bench:
"Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener,
twenty shillings for stuff to poison the
sparrows, by my orders." Next to him
was old Barton— a jolly negation, who took
upon him the ordering of the bills of fare
for the parliament chamber, where the
benchers dine— answering to the combina-
tion-rooms at College— much to the ease-
ment of his less epicurean brethren. I
know nothing more of him.— Then Read,
and Twopenny— Read, good-humored and
214

OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE

personable— Twopenny, good-humored, but
thin, and felicitous in jests upon his own
figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenu-
ated and fleeting. Many must remember
him (for he was rather of later date) and
his singular gait, which was performed by
three steps and a jump regularly succeed-
ing. The steps were little efforts, like that
of a child beginning to walk; the jump com-
paratively vigorous, as a foot to an inch.
Where he learned this figure, or what occa-
sioned it, I could never discover. It was
neither graceful in itself, nor seemed to
answer the purpose any better than com-
mon walking. The extreme tenuity of his
frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was
a trial of poising. Twopenny would often
rally him upon his leanness, and hail him
as Brother Lusty; but W. had no relish of
a joke. His features were spiteful. I have
heard that he would pinch his cat's ears
extremely when anything had offended him.
Jackson— the omniscient Jackson, he was
called— was of this period. He had the
reputation of possessing more multifarious
knowledge than any man of his time. He
was the Friar Bacon of the less literate
portion of the Temple. I remember a pleas-
ant passage of the cook applying to him,
with much formality of apology, for in-
215

ESSAYS OF ELIA

structions how to write down edge bone of
beef in his bill of commons. He was sup-
posed to know, if any man in the world did.
He decided the orthography to be— as I
have given it— fortifying his authority with
such anatomical reasons as dismissed the
manciple (for the time) learned and happy.
Some do spell it yet, perversely, aitch bone,
from a fanciful resemblance between its
shape and that of the aspirate so denomi-
nated. I had almost forgotten Mingay with
the iron hand— but he was somewhat later.
He had lost his right hand by some acci-
dent, and supplied it with a grappling-hook,
which he wielded with a tolerable adroit-
ness. I detected the substitute before I
was old enough to reason whether it were
artificial or not. I remember the astonish-
ment it raised in me. He was a blustering,
loud-talking person; and I reconciled the
phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of
power— somewhat like the horns in the
forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron
Maseres, who walks (or did till very lately)
in the costume of the reign of George the
Second, closes my imperfect recollections
of the old benchers of the Inner Temple.

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled?
Or, if the like of you exist, why exist they
no more for me? Ye inexplicable, half-
216

OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE

understood appearances, why comes in
reason to tear away the preternatural mist,
bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you?
Why make ye so sorry a figure in my rela-
tion, who made up to me— to my childish
eyes— the mythology of the Temple? In
those days I saw Gods, as " old men covered
with a mantle," walking upon the earth.
Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish,—
extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of
legendary fabling, in the heart of childhood
there will, forever, spring up a well of
innocent or wholesome superstition— the
seeds of exaggeration will be busy there,
and vital— from every-day forms educing the
unknown and the uncommon. In that little
Goshen there will be light when the grown
world flounders about in the darkness of
sense and materiality. While childhood,
and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall
be left, imagination shall not have spread
her holy wings totally to fly the earth.

P.S.— I have done injustice to the soft
shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to
trust to imperfect memory, and the erring
notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always
thought that he had been a bachelor ! This
gentleman, R. N. informs me, married
young, and losing his lady in childbed,
217

ESSAYS OF ELI'A

within the first year of their union, fell into
adeep melancholy, from the effects of which,
probably,' he never thoroughly recovered.
In what a new light does this place his re-
jection (0 call it by a gentler name!) of mild

Susan P , unraveling into beauty certain

peculiarities of this very shy and retiring
character! Henceforth let no one receive
the narratives of Elia for true records!
They are, in truth, but shadows of fact-
verisimilitudes, not verities— or sitting but
upon the remote edges and outskirts of
history. He is no such honest chronicler
as R. N., and would have done better per-
haps to have consulted that gentleman
before he sent these incondite reminiscences
to press. But the worthy subtreasurer—
who respects his old and his new masters
—would but have been puzzled at the inde-
corous liberties of Elia. The good man
wots not, peradventure, of the license which
Magazines have arrived at in this plain-
speaking age, or hardly dreams of their
existence beyond the Gentleman's— his fur-
thest monthly excursions in this nature
having been long confined to the holy
ground of honest Urban's obituary. May
it be long before his own name shall help
to swell those columns of unenvied flattery!
—Meantime, 0 ye New Benchers of the
218

OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE

Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is
himself the kindliest of human creatures.
Should infirmities overtake him— he is yet
in green and vigorous senility— make al-
lowances for them, remembering that "ye
yourselves are old." So may the Winged
Horse, your ancient badge and cognizance,
still flourish! so may future Hookers and
Seldens illustrate your church and cham-
bers! so may the sparrows, in default of
more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop
about your walks! so may the fresh-colored
and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave,
airs her playful charge in your stately gar-
dens, drop her prettiest blushing courtesy
as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emo-
tion! so may the younkers of this genera-
tion eye you, pacing your stately terrace,
with the same superstitious veneration with
which the child Elia gazed on the Old
Worthies that solemnized the parade be-
fore ye!

219

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

THE custom of saying grace at meals
had, probably, its origin in the early
times of the world, and the hunter-
state of man, when dinners were precarious
things, and a full meal was something more
than a common blessing! when a bellyful
was a windfall, and looked like a special
providence. In the shouts and triumphal
songs with which, after a season of sharp
abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's
flesh would naturally be ushered home,
existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern
grace. It is not otherwise easy to be under-
stood, why the blessing of food— the act of
eating— should have had a particular ex-
pression of thanksgiving annexed to it, dis-
tinct from that implied and silent gratitude
with which we are expected to enter upon
the enjoyment of the many other various
gifts and good things of existence.

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon

twenty other occasions in the course of the

day besides my dinner. I want a form for

setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a

220

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting,
or a solved problem. Why have we none
for books, those spiritual repasts— a grace
before Milton— a grace before Shakspere
—a devotional exercise proper to be said
before reading the Fairy Queen?— but the
received ritual having prescribed these
forms to the solitary ceremony of mandu-
cation, I shall confine my observations to
the experience which I have had of the
grace, properly so called; commending my
new scheme for extension to a niche in the
grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance
in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling by
my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of
a certain snug congregation of Utopian
Rabelaisian Christians, no matter where
assembled.

The form, then, of the benediction before
eating has its beauty at a poor man's table,
or at the simple and unprovocative repasts
of children. It is here that the grace be-
comes exceedingly graceful. The indigent
man, who hardly knows whether he shall
have a meal the next day or not, sits down
to his fare with a present sense of the bless-
ing, which can be but feebly acted by the
rich, into whose minds the conception of
wanting a dinner could never, but by some
extreme theory, have entered. The proper
221

ESSAYS OF ELIA

end of food— the animal sustenance— is
barely contemplated by them. ^The poor
man's bread is his daily bread, literally his
bread for the day. Their courses are peren-
nial.

Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest
to be preceded by the grace. That which is
least stimulative to appetite, leaves the
mind most free for foreign considerations.
A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful,
over a dish of plain mutton with turnips,
and have leisure to reflect upon the ordi-
nance and institution of eating; when he
shall confess a perturbation of mind, incon-
sistent with the purposes of the grace, at
the presence of venison or turtle. When I
have sate (a varus hospes) at rich men's
tables, with the savory soup and messes
steaming up the nostrils, and moistening
the lips of the guests with desire and a dis-
tracted choice, I have felt the introduction
of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With
the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems
impertinent to interpose a religious senti-
ment. It is a confusion of purpose to mut-
ter out praises from a mouth that waters.
The heats of epicurism put out the gentle
flame of devotion. The incense which rises
round is pagan, and the belly-god intercepts
it for its own. The very excess of the pro-
222

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

vision beyond the needs, takes away all
sense of proportion between the end and
means. The giver is veiled by his gifts.
You are startled at the injustice of return-
ing thanks— for what?— for having too
much while so many starve. It is to praise
the Gods amiss.

I have [observed this awkwardness felt,
scarce consciously perhaps, by the good
man who says the grace. I have seen it in
clergymen and others— a sort of shame— a
sense of the co-presence of circumstances
which unhallow the blessing. After a de-
votional tone put on for a few seconds, how
rapidly the speaker will fall into his common
voice ! helping himself or his neighbor, as if
to get rid of some uneasy sensation of hy-
pocrisy. Not that the good man was a
hypocrite, or was not most conscientious in
the discharge of the duty; but he felt in
his inmost mind the incompatibility of the
scene and the viands before him with the
exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.

I hear somebody exclaim,— Would you
have Christians sit down at table like hogs
to their troughs, without remembering the
Giver?— no— I would have them sit down as
Christians, remembering the Giver, and less
like hogs. Or, if their appetites must run
riot, and they must pamper themselves
223

ESSAYS OP ELIA

with delicacies for which east and west are
ransacked, I would have them postpone
their benediction to a fitter season, when
appetite is laid; when the still small voice
can he heard, and the reason of the grace
returns— with temperate diet and restricted
dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no
proper occasions for thanksgiving. When
Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked.
Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, when
he put into the mouth of Celaeno anything
but a blessing. We may be gratefully sen-
sible of the deliciousness of some kinds of
food beyond others, though that is a meaner
and inferior gratitude: but the proper object
of the grace is sustenance, not relishes;
daily bread, not delicacies; the means of
life, and not the means of pampering the
carcass. With what frame or composure,
I wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his
benediction at some great Hall-feast, when
he knows that his last concluding pious
word— and that, in all probability, the sacred
name which he preaches— is but the signal
for so many impatient harpies to commence
their foul orgies, with as little sense of true
thankfulness (which is temperance) as those
Virgilian fowl ! It is well if the good man
himself does not feel his devotions a little
clouded, those foggy sensuous steams min-
224

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

gling with and polluting the pure altar sac-
rifice.

The severest satire upon full tables and
surfeits is the banquet which Satan, in the
Paradise Regained, provides for a tempta-
tion in the wilderness:

A table richly spread in regal mode
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
And savor ; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore.
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.

The Tempter, I warrant you, thought
these cates would go down without the
recommendatory preface of a benediction.
They are like to be short graces where the
devil plays the host.— I am afraid the poet
wants his usual decorum in this place.
Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury,
or of a gaudy day at Cambridge? This was
a temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The
whole banquet is too civic and culinary,
and the accompaniments altogether a
profanation of that deep, abstracted, holy
scene. The mighty artillery of sauces,
which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of
proportion to the simple wants and plain
hunger of the guest. He that disturbed
him in his dreams, from his dreams might
15 225

ESSAYS OP ELIA

have been taught better. To the temperate
fantasies of the famished Son of God, what
sort of feasts presented themselves?— He
dreamed indeed,

—As appetite is wont to dream,

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet.

But what meats?—

Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn ;
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what

they brought.
He saw the prophet also how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper ; then how awaked
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
And ate the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days :
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook.
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than
these temperate dreams of the divine Hun-
gerer. To which of these two visionary
banquets, think you, would the introduction
of what is called the grace have been most
fitting and pertinent?

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces;
but practically I own that (before meat
especially) they seem to involve something
226

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites,
of one or another kind, are excellent spurs
to our reason, which might otherwise but
feebly set about the great ends of preserving
and continuing the species. They are fit
blessings to be contemplated at a distance
with a becoming gratitude; but the moment
of appetite (the judicious reader will appre-
hend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season
for that exercise. The Quakers, who go
about their business of every description
with more calmness than we, have more
title to the use of these benedictory pref-
aces. I have always admired their silent
grace, and the more because I have ob-
served their applications to the meat and
drink following to be less passionate and
sensual than ours. They are neither glut-
tons nor winebibbers as a people. They
eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with
indifference, calmness, and cleanly circum-
stances. They neither grease nor slop
themselves. When I see a citizen in his
bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a sur-
plice.

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I
am not indifferent to the kinds of it. Those
unctuous morsels of deer's flesh were not
made to be received with dispassionate
services. I hate a man who swallows it,
227

ESSAYS OF ELIA

affecting not to know what he is eating.
I suspect his taste in higher matters. I
shrink instinctively from one who professes
to hke minced veal. There is a physiog-
nomical character in the tastes for food.

C holds that a man cannot have a pure

mind who refuses apple-dumplings. I am
not certain but he is right. With the decay
of my first innocence, I confess a less and
less relish daily for those innocuous cates.
The whole vegetable tribe have lost their
gust with me. Only I stick to asparagus,
which still seems to inspire gentle thoughts.
I am impatient and querulous under culi-
nary disappointments, as to come home at
the dinner-hour, for instance, expecting
some savory mess, and to find one quite
tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill melted
— that commonest of kitchen failures — puts
me beside my tenor.— The author of the
Rambler used to make inarticulate animal
noises over a favorite food. Was this the
music quite proper to be preceded by the
grace? or would the pious man have done
better to postpone his devotions to a season
when the blessing might be contemplated
with less perturbation? I quarrel with no
man's tastes, nor would set my thin face
against those excellent things, in their way,
j ollity and feasting. But as these exercises,
228

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

however laudable, have little in them of
grace or gracefulness, a man should be sure,
before he ventures so to grace them, that
while he is pretending his devotions other-
where, he is not secretly kissing his hand
to some great fish — his Dagon — with a
special consecration of no ark but the fat
tureen before him. Graces are the sweet
preluding strains to the banquets of angels
and children; to the roots and severer re-
pasts of the Chartreuse; to the slender, but
not slenderly acknowledged, refection of
the poor and humble man: but at the
heaped-up boards of the pampered and the
luxurious they become of dissonant mood,
less timed and tuned to the occasion, me-
thinks, than the noise of those better be-
fitting organs would be which children hear
tales of, at Hog's Norton. We sit too long
at our meals, or are too curious in the study
of them, or too disordered in our application
to them, or engross too great a portion of
those good things (which should be com-
mon) to our share, to be able with any grace
to say grace. To be thankful for what we
grasp exceeding our proportion, is to add
hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of
this truth is what makes the performance
of this duty so cold and spiritless a service
at most tables. In houses where the grace
229

ESSAYS OF ELIA

is as indispensable as the napkin, who has
not seen that never-settled question arise,
as to who shall say it ? while'lihe good man
of the house and the visitor clergyman, or
some other guest belike of next authority,
from years or gravity, shall be bandying
^bout the office between them as a matter
of compliment, each of them not unwilling
to shift the awkward burden of an equivo-
cal duty from his own shoulders?

I once drank tea in company with two
Methodist divines of different persuasions,
whom it was my fortune to introduce to
each other for the first time that evening.
Before the first cup was handed round, one
of these reverend gentlemen put it to the
other, with all due solemnity, whether he
chose to say anything. It seems it is the
custom with some sectaries to put up a
short prayer before this meal also. His
reverend brother did not at first quite ap-
prehend him, but upon an explanation, with
little less importance he made answer that
it was not a custom known in his church:
in which courteous evasion the other ac-
quiescing for good manners' sake, or in
compliance with a weak brother, the sup-
plementary or tea grace was waived alto-
gether. With what spirit might not Lucian
have painted two priests, of his religion,
230

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

playing into each other's hands the com-
pHment of performing or omitting a sacri-
fice,—the hungry God meantime, doubtful
of his incense, with expectant nostrils
hovering over the two flamens, and (as be-
tween two stools) going away in the end
without his supper.

A short form upon these occasions is felt
to want reverence; a long one, I am afraid,
cannot escape the charge of impertinence.
I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic
conciseness with which that equivocal wag
(but my pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L.,
when importuned for a grace, used to in-
quire, first slyly leering down the table, " Is
there no clergyman here?"— significantly

adding, " Thank G ." Nor do I think our

old form at school quite pertinent, where
we were used to preface our bald bread-and-
cheese suppers with a preamble, connecting
with that humble blessing a recognition of
benefits the most awful and overwhelming
to the imagination which religion has to
offer. Non tunc illis erat locus. I remem-
ber we were put to it to reconcile the phrase
" good creatures," upon which the blessing
rested, with the fare set before us, wilfully
understanding that expression in a low and
animal sense,— till some one recalled a le-
gend, which told how, in the golden days of
231

ESSAYS OF ELIA

Christ's, the young Hospitalers were wont
to have smoking joints of roast meat upon
their nightly hoards, till some pious bene-
factor, commiserating the decencies, rather
than the palates, of the children, commuted
our flesh for garments, and gave us— hor-
resco refer ens— trousers instead of mutton.

232

DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE

CHILDREN love to listen to, stories
about their elders, when they were
children; to stretch their imagination
to the conception of a traditionary great-
uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw.
It was in this spirit that my little ones crept
about me the other evening to hear about
their great-grandmother Field, who lived in
a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times
bigger than that in which they and papa
lived) which had been the scene— so at least
it was generally believed in that part of the
country— of the tragic incidents which they
had lately become familiar with from the
ballad of the Children in the Wood. Cer-
tain it is that the whole story of the chil-
dren and their cruel uncle was to be seen
fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-
piece of the great hall, the whole story
down to the Robin Redbreasts; till a foolish
rich person pulled it down to set up a
marble one of modern invention in its stead,
with no story upon it. Here Alice put out
one of her dear mother's looks, too tender
233

ESSAYS OP ELIA

to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to
say, how religious and how good their great-
grandmother Field was, how beloved and
respected by everybody, though she was not
indeed the mistress of this great house, but
had only the charge of it (and yet in some
respects she might be said to be the mis-
tress of it too) committed to her by the
owner, who preferred living in a newer and
more fashionable mansion which he had
purchased somewhere in the adjoining
county; but still she lived in it in a manner
as if it had been her own, and kept up the
dignity of the great house in a sort while
she lived, which afterwards came to decay,
and was nearly pulled down, and all its old
ornaments stripped and carried away to the
owner's other house, where they were set
up, and looked as awkward as if some one
were to carry away the old tombs they had
seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up
in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room.
Here John smiled, as much as to say, " that
would be foolish indeed." And then I told
how, when she came to die, her funeral was
attended by a concourse of all the poor, and
some of the gentry too, of the neighborhood
for many miles round, to show their respect
for her memory, because she had been such
a good and religious woman; so good indeed
234

DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE

that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, aye,
and a great part of the Testament besides.
Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I
told what a tall, upright, graceful person
their great-grandmother Field once was;
and how in her youth she was esteemed the
best dancer— here Alice's little right foot
played an involuntary movement, till, upon
my looking grave, it desisted— the best
dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a
cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and
bowed her down with pain; but it could
never bend her good spirits, or make them
stoop, but they were still upright, because
she was so good and religious. Then I told
how she was used to sleep by herself in a
lone chamber of the great lone house; and
how she believed that an apparition of two
infants was to be seen at midnight gliding
up and down the great staircase near where
she slept, but she said "those innocents
would do her no harm "; and how frightened
I used to be, though in those days I had my
maid to sleep with me, because I was never
half so good or religious as she— and yet I
never saw the infants. Here John expanded
all his eyebrows and tried to look coura-
geous. Then I told how good she was to
all her grandchildren, having us to the great
house in the holydays, where I in particular
235

ESSAYS OF ELIA

used to spend many hours by myself, in
gazing upon the old busts of the twelve
Csesars, that had been Emperors of Rome,
till the old marble heads would seem to live
again, or I to be turned into marble with
them; how I never could be tired with roam-
ing about that huge mansion, with its vast
empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings,
fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels,
with the gilding almost rubbed out— some-
times in the spacious old-fashioned gardens,
which I had almost to myself, unless when
now and then a solitary gardening-man
would cross me— and how the nectarines
and peaches hung upon the walls, without
my ever offering to pluck them, because
they were forbidden fruit, unless now and
then,— and because I had more pleasure in
strolling about among the old melancholy-
looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking
up the red berries, and the fir-apples, which
were good for nothing but to look at— or in
lying about upon the fresh grass with all
the fine garden smells around me— or bask-
ing in the orangery, till I could almost
fancy myself ripening too along with the
oranges and the limes in that grateful
warmth — or in watching the dace that
darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the
bottom of the garden, with here and there
236

DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE

a great sulky pike hanging midway down
the water in silent state, as if it mocked at
their impertinent friskings,— I had more
pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than
in all the sweet flavors of peaches, necta-
rines, oranges, and such-like common baits
of children. Here John slyly deposited back
upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which,
not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated
dividing with her, and both seemed willing
to relinquish them for the present as irrel-
evant. Then, in somewhat a more height-
ened tone, I told how, though their great-
grandmother Field loved all her grandchil-
dren, yet in an especial manner she might

be said to love their uncle, John L ,

because he was so handsome and spirited a
youth, and a king to the rest of us; and,
instead of moping about in solitary corners,
like some of us, he would mount the most
mettlesome horse he could get, when but
an imp no bigger than themselves, and make
it carry him half over the county in a morn-
ing, and join the hunters when there were
any out— and yet he loved the old great
house and gardens too, but had too much
spirit to be always pent up within their
boundaries— and how their uncle grew up
to man's estate as brave as he was hand-
some, to the admiration of everybody, but
237

ESSAYS OF ELIA

of their great-grandmother Field most
especially; and how he used to carry me
upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy
—for he was a good bit older than me—
many a mile when I could not walk for pain;
—and how in after life he became lame-
footed too, and I did not always (I fear)
make allowances enough for him when he
was impatient and in pain, nor remember
sufficiently how considerate he had been to
me when I was lame-footed; and how when
he died, though he had not been dead an
hour, it seemed as if he had died a great
while ago, such a distance there is betwixt
life and death; and how I bore his death as
I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards
it haunted and haunted me; and though I
did not cry or take it to heart as some do,
and as I think he would have done if I had
died, yet I missed him all day long, and
knew not till then how much I had loved
him. I missed his kindness, and I missed
his crossness, and wished him to be alive
again, to be quarreling with him (for we
quarreled sometimes), rather than not have
him again, and was as uneasy without him,
as he, their poor uncle, must have been
when the doctor took off his limb.— Here
the children fell a-crying, and asked if their
238

DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE

little mourning which they had on was not
for uncle John, and they looked up, and
prayed me not to go on ahout their uncle,
but to tell them some stories about their
pretty dead mother. Then I told how for
seven long years, in hope sometimes, some-
times in despair, yet persisting ever, I

courted the fair Alice W n; and as much

as children could understand, I explained to
them what coyness, and difficulty, and de-
nial, meant in maidens— when suddenly
turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice
looked out at her eyes with such a reality
of re-presentment, that I became in doubt
which of them stood there before me, or
whose that bright hair was; and while I
stood gazing, both the children gradually
grew fainter to my view, receding, and still
receding, till nothing at last but two mourn-
ful features were seen in the uttermost
distance, which, without speech, strangely
impressed upon me the effects of speech:
" We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are
we children at all. The children of Alice
call Bartrum father. We are nothing; less
than nothing, and dreams. We are only
what might have been, and must wait upon
the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages
before we have existence, and a name"—
239

ESSAYS OF ELIA

and immediately awaking, I found myself
quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair,
where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful
Bridget unchanged by my side— but John
L. (or James Elia) was gone forever.

240

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS

IN A LETTER TO B. F., ESQ., AT SYDNEY,
NEW SOUTH WALES

M'

Y DEAR F.— When I think how wel-
come the sight of a letter from the
world where you were born must
be to you in that strange one to which you
have been transplanted, I feel some com-
punctious visitings at my long silence. But,
indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a
correspondence at our distance. The weary
world of waters between us oppresses the
imagination. It is difficult to conceive how
a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across
it. It is a sort of presumption to expect
that one's thoughts should live so far. It
is like writing for posterity; and reminds
me of one of Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions,
"Alcander to Strephon in the shades."
Cowley's Post- Angel is no more than would
be expedient in such an intercourse. One
drops a packet at Lombard Street, and in
twenty-four hours a friend in Cumberland
gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It is
only like whispering through a long trum-
pet. But suppose a tube let down from the
16 241

ESSAYS OF ELIA

moon, with yourself at one end and the man
at the other; it would be some balk to the
spirit of conversation, if you knew that the
dialogue exchanged with that interesting
theosophist would take two or three revolu-
tions of a higher luminary in its passage.
Yet, for aught I know, you may be some
parasangs nigher that primitive idea—
Plato's man— than we in England here have
the honor to reckon ourselves.

Epistolary matter usually compriseth
three topics; news, sentiment, and puns.
In the latter, I include all non-serious sub-
jects; or subjects serious in themselves,
but treated after my fashion, non-seriously.
—And first, for news. In them the most
desirable circumstance, I suppose, is that
they shall be true. But what security can
I have that what I now send you for truth
shall not, before you get it, unaccountably
turn into a lie? For instance, our mutual
friend P. is at this present writing— my
Now— in good health, and enjoys a fair
share of worldly reputation. You are glad
to hear it. This is natural and friendly.
But at this present reading— your Now— he
may possibly be in the Bench, or going to
be hanged, which in reason ought to abate
something of your transport (i.e., at hearing
he was well, etc.), or at least considerably
242

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS

to modify it. I am going to the play this
evening, to have a laugh with Munden.
You have no theater, I think you told me,
in your land of d d realities. You natu-
rally lick your lips, and envy me my felicity.
Think but a moment, and you will correct
the hateful emotion. Why, it is Sunday
morning with you, and 1823. This confu-
sion of tenses, this grand solecism of two
presents, is in a degree common to all pos-
tage. But if I sent you word to Bath or De-
vizes, that I was expecting the aforesaid
treat this evening, though at the moment
you received the intelligence my full feast
of fun would he over, yet there would he for
a day or two after, as you would well know,
a smack, a relish left upon my mental
palate, which would give rational encour-
agement for you to foster a portion, at
least, of the disagreeable passion, which it
was in part my intention to produce. But
ten months hence, your envy or your sym-
pathy would be as useless as a passion spent
upon the dead. Not only does truth, in
these long intervals, unessence herself, but
(what is harder) one cannot venture a crude
fiction, for the fear that it may ripen into
a truth upon the voyage. What a wild im-
probable banter I put upon you, some three
years since,— of Will Weatherall having
243

ESSAYS OF ELIA

married a servant-maid! I remember
gravely consulting you how we were to
receive her— for Will's wife was in no case
to be rejected; and your no less serious
replication in the matter; how tenderly
you advised an abstemious introduction of
literary topics before the lady, with a cau-
tion not to be too forward in bringing on
the carpet matters more within the sphere
of her intelligence; your deliberate judg-
ment, or rather wise suspension of sentence,
how far jacks, and spits, and mops could,
with propriety, be introduced as subjects;
whether the conscious avoiding of all such
matters in discourse would not have a worse
look than the taking of them casually in our
way; in what manner we should carry our-
selves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William
Weatherall being by; whether we should
show more delicacy, and a truer sense of
respect for WilPs wife, by treating Becky
with our customary chiding before her, or
by an unusual deferential civility paid to
Becky, as to a person of great worth, but
thrown by the caprice of fate into a humble
station. There were difficulties, I remem-
ber, on both sides, which you did me the
favor to state with the precision of a lawyer,
united to the tenderness of a friend. I
laughed in my sleeve at your solemn plead-
244

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS

ings, when lo! while I was valuing myself
upon this flam put upon you in New South
Wales, the devil in England, jealous pos-
sibly of any lie-children not his own, or
working after my copy, has actually insti-
gated our friend (not three days since) to
the commission of a matrimony, which I
had only conjured up for your diversion.
William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cot-
terel's maid. But to take it in its truest
sense, you will see, my dear F., that news
from me must become history to you; which
I neither profess to write, nor indeed care
much for reading. No person, under a di-
viner, can, with any prospect of veracity,
conduct a correspondence at such an arm's-
length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus
interchange intelligence with effect; the
epoch of the writer (Habakkuk) falling in
with the true present time of the receiver
(Daniel); but then we are no prophets.

Then as to sentiment. It fares little
better with that. This kind of dish, above
all, requires to be served up hot, or sent off
in water-plates, that your friend may have
it almost as warm as yourself. If it have
time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all
cold meats. I have often smiled at a con-
ceit of the late Lord C. It seems that trav-
eling somewhere about Geneva, he came
245

ESSAYS OF ELIA

to some pretty green spot, or nook, where
a willow, or something, hung so fantasti-
cally and invitingly over a stream— was it?
—or a rock?— no matter— hut the stillness
and the repose, after a weary journey, 't is
likely, in a languid moment of his Lordship's
hot, restless life, so took his fancy that he
could imagine no place so proper, in the
event of his death, to lay his hones in. This
was all very natural and excusable as a sen-
timent, and shows his character in a very
pleasing light. But when from a passing
sentiment it came to he an act; and when,
by a positive testamentary disposal, his re-
mains were actually carried all that way
from England; who was there, some desper-
ate sentimentalists excepted, that did not
ask the question, Why could not his Lord-
ship have found a spot as solitary, a nook
as romantic, a tree as green and pendent,
with a stream as emblematic to his purpose,
in Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon? Con-
ceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted,
entered at the Custom House (startling the
tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted into
a ship. Conceive it pawed about and han-
dled between the rude jests of tarpaulin
ruffians— a thing of its delicate texture—
the salt bilge wetting it till it became as
vapid as a damaged lustring. Suppose it
246

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS

in material danger (mariners have some
superstition about sentiments) of being
tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitia-
tory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us
from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's
purpose !), but it has happily evaded a fishy
consummation. Trace it then to its lucky
landing— at Lyons shall we say?— I have
not the map before me— jostled upon four
men's shoulders— baiting at this town—
stopping to refresh at t' other village— wait-
ing a passport here, a license there; the
sanction of the magistracy in this district,
the concurrence of the ecclesiastics in that
canton; till at length it arrives at its desti-
nation, tired out and jaded, from a brisk
sentiment into a feature of silly pride or
tawdry senseless affectation. How few sen-
timents, my dear F., I am afraid we can set
down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite sea-
worthy.

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which
though contemptible in bulk, are the twin-
kling corpuscula which should irradiate a
right friendly epistle— your puns and small
jests are, I apprehend, extremely circum-
scribed in their sphere of action. They are
so far from a capacity of being packed up
and sent beyond sea, they will scarce endure
to be transported by hand from this room
247

ESSAYS OF ELIA

to the next. Their vigor is as the instant
of their birth. Their nutriment for their
brief existence is the intellectual atmo-
sphere of the bystanders: or this last is the
fine slime of Nilus— the melior lutus— whose
maternal recipiency is as necessary as the
sol pater to their equivocal generation. A
pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kiss-
ing smack with it; you can no more trans-
mit it in its pristine flavor than you can
send a kiss.— Have you not tried in some
instances to palm off a yesterday's pun upon
a gentleman, and has it answered? Not
but it was new to his hearing, but it did
not seem to come new from you. It did not
hitch in. It was like picking up at a village
ale-house a two-days-old newspaper. You
have not seen it before, but you resent the
stale thing as an affront. This sort of mer-
chandise above all requires a quick return.
A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must be
co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk
lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A
moment's interval, and the link is snapped.
A pun is reflected from a friend's face as
from a mirror. Who would consult his
sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were
two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve
months, my dear P.) in giving back its copy?
I cannot image to myself whereabout you
248

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS

are. When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's
island comes across me. Sometimes you
seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see
Diogenes prying among you with his per-
petual fruitless lantern. What must you
be willing by this time to give for the sight
of an honest man! You must almost have
forgotten how we look. And tell me what
your Sydneyites do? are they th**v*ng all
day long? Merciful Heaven! what prop-
erty can stand against such a depredation !
The kangaroos— your Aborigines— do they
keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-
tainted, with those little short fore puds,
looking like a lesson framed by nature to
the pickpocket! Marry, for diving into
fobs they are rather lamely provided a
priori; but if the hue and cry were once
up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-
shifters as the expertest locomotor in the
colony. We hear the most improbable
tales at this distance. Pray is it true that
the young Spartans among you are born
with six fingers, which spoils their scan-
ning?—It must look very odd; but use rec-
onciles. For their scansion, it is less to be
regretted; for if they take it into their
heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn
out, the greater part of them, vile plagia-
rists.—Is there much difference to see, too,
249

ESSAYS OP ELIA

between the son of a th**f and the grand-
son? or where does the taint stop? Do you
bleach in three or in four generations? I
have many questions to put, but ten Delphic
voyages can be made in a shorter time than
it will take to satisfy my scruples.— Do you
grow your own hemp?— What is your staple
trade,— exclusive of the national profession,
I mean? Your locksmiths, I take it, are
some of your great capitalists.

I am insensibly chatting to you as fa-
miliarly as when we used to exchange
good morrows out of our old contiguous
windows, in pump-famed Hare Court in
the Temple. Why did you ever leave that
quiet corner?— Why did I?— with its com-
plement of four poor elms, from whose
smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting
ruralists, I picked my first ladybirds! My
heart is as dry as that spring sometimes
proves in a thirsty August, when I revert
to the space that is between us; a length of
passage enough to render obsolete the
phrases of our English letters before they
can reach you. But while I talk I think
you hear me,— thoughts dallying with vain
surmise—

Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.

250

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS

Come back, before I am grown into a very
old man, so as you shall hardly know me.
Come, before Bridget walks on crutches.
Girls whom you left children have become
sage matrons while you are tarrying there.

The blooming Miss W r (you remember

Sally W r) called upon us yesterday, an

aged crone. Folks whom you knew die off
every year. Formerly, I thought that death
was wearing out,— I stood ramparted about
with so many healthy friends. The depar-
ture of J. W., two springs back, corrected
my delusion. Since then the old divorcer
has been busy. If you do not make haste
to return, there will be little left to greet
you, of me, or mine.

251

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS

I LIKE to meet a sweep— understand me
—not a grown sweeper— old chimney-
sweepers are by no means attractive—
but one of those tender novices, blooming
through their first nigritude, the maternal
washings not quite effaced from the cheek
—such as come forth with the dawn, or
somewhat earlier, with their little profes-
sional notes sounding like the peep-peep of
a young sparrow; or liker to the matin lark
should I pronounce them, in their aerial
ascents not seldom anticipating the sun-
rise?

I have a kindly yearning towards these
dim specks— poor blots— innocent black-
nesses—

I reverence these young Africans of our
own growth— these almost clergy imps, who
sport their cloth without assumption; and
from their little pulpits (the tops of chim-
neys), in the nipping air of a December
morning, preach a lesson of patience to
mankind.

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure
252

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS

it was to witness their operation! to see a
chit no bigger than one's self, enter, one
knew not by what process, into what seemed
the/awces A verm— to pursue him in imagi-
nation, as he went sounding on through so
many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades!
— to shudder with the idea that "now,
surely he must be lost forever!"— to revive
at hearing his feeble shout of discovered
daylight— and then (0 fullness of delight!)
running out of doors, to come just in time
to see the sable phenomenon emerge in
safety, the brandished weapon of his art
victorious like some flag waved over a con-
quered citadel ! I seem to remember having
been told, that a bad sweep was once left in
a stack with his brush, to indicate which
way the wind blew. It was an awful spec-
tacle, certainly; not much unlike the old
stage direction in Macbeth, where the " Ap-
parition of a child crowned, with a tree in
his hand, rises."

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small
gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to
give him a penny. It is better to give him
twopence. If it be starving weather, and
to the proper troubles of his hard occupa-
tion, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual ac-
companiment) be superadded, the demand
on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester.
253

ESSAYS OF ELIA

There is a composition, the groundwork
of which I have understood to be the sweet
wood yclept sassafras. This wood boiled
down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an
infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some
tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxury.
I know not how thy palate may relish it;
for myself, with every deference to the judi-
cious Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind
kept open a shop (the only one he avers in
London) for the vending of this "whole-
some and pleasant beverage," on the south
side of Fleet Street, as thou approachest
Bridge Street— the only Salopian house— I
have never yet adventured to dip my own
particular lip in a basin of his commended
ingredients— a cautious premonition to the
olfactories constantly whispering to me,
that my stomach must infallibly, with all
due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen
palates, otherwise not uninstructed in die-
tetical elegancies, sup it up with avidity.

I know not by what particular conforma-
tion of the organ it happens, but I have
always found that this composition is sur-
prisingly gratifying to the palate of a young
chimney-sweeper— whether the oily parti-
cles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do
attenuate and soften the fuliginous con-
cretions, which are sometimes found (in
254

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS

dissections) to adhere to the roof of the
mouth in these unfledged practitioners; or
whether Nature, sensible that she had
mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot
of these raw victims, caused to grow out of
the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive
—but so it is, that no possible taste or odor
to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper
can convey a delicate excitement compara-
ble to this mixture. Being penniless, they
will yet hang their black heads over the
ascending steam, to gratify one sense if
possible, seemingly no less pleased than
those domestic animals— cats— when they
purr over a new-found sprig of valerian.
There is something more in these sympa-
thies than philosophy can inculcate.

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not with-
out reason, that his is the only Salopian
house; yet be it known to thee, reader— if
thou art one who keepest what are called
good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the
fact— he hath a race of industrious imita-
tors, who from stalls, and under open sky,
dispense the same savory mess to humbler
customers, at that dead time of the dawn,
when (as extremes meet) the rake reeling
home from his midnight cups, and the hard-
handed artisan leaving his bed to resume
the premature labors of the day, jostle, not
255

ESSAYS OF ELIA

unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting
of the former, for the honors of the pave-
ment. It is the time when, in summer,
between the expired and the not yet re-
lumined kitchen fires, the kennels of our
fair metropohs give forth their least satis-
factory odors. The rake, who wisheth to
dissipate his o'ernight vapors in more grate-
ful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he
passeth; but the artisan stops to taste, and
blesses the fragrant breakfast.

This is saloop— the precocious herb-
woman's darling— the delight of the early
gardener, who transports his smoking cab-
bages by break of day from Hammersmith
to Covent Garden's famed piazzas— the de-
light, and oh! I fear, too often the envy, of
the unpennied sweep. Him shouldst thou
haply encounter, with his dim visage pen-
dent over the grateful steam, regale him
with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee
but three halfpennies) and a slice of delicate
bread and butter (an added halfpenny)— so
may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'er-
charged secretions from thy worse-placed
hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to
the welkin— so may the descending soot
never taint thy costly well-ingredienced
soups— nor the odious cry, quick-reaching
from street to street, of the fired chimney,
256

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS

invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent
parishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation
thy peace and pocket!

I am by nature extremely susceptible of
street affronts; the jeers and taunts of the
populace; the low-bred triumph they dis-
play over the casual trip or splashed stock-
ing of a gentleman. Yet can I endure the
jocularity of a young sweep with something
more than forgiveness.— In the last winter
but one, pacing along Cheapside with my
accustomed precipitation when I walk west-
ward, a treacherous slide brought me upon
my back in an instant. I scrambled up
with pain and shame enough— yet out-
wardly trying to face it down, as if nothing
had happened — when the roguish grin of
one of these young wits encountered me.
There he stood, pointing me out with his
dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor
woman (I suppose his mother) in particular,
till the tears for the exquisiteness of the
fun (so he thought it) worked themselves
out at the corners of his poor red eyes, red
from many a previous weeping, and soot-
inflamed, yet twinkling through all with
such a joy, snatched out of desolation,
that Hogarth— but Hogarth has got him
already (how could he miss him?) in the
March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman
17 257

ESSAYS OF ELIA

—there he stood, as he stands in the pic-
ture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last
forever— with such a maximum of glee,
and minimum of mischief, in his mirth— for
the grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely
no malice in it — that I could have been con-
tent, if the honor of a gentleman might
endure it, to have remained his butt and
his mockery till midnight.

I am by theory obdurate to the seductive-
ness of what are called a fine set of teeth.
Every pair of rosy lips (the ladies must
pardon me) is a casket presumably holding
such jewels; but, methinks, they should
take leave to "air" them as frugally as
possible. The fine lady, or fine gentleman,
who show me their teeth, show me bones.
Yet must I confess, that from the mouth of
a true sweep a display (even to ostentation)
of those white and shiny ossifications,
strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in man-
ners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It
is as when

a sable cloud
Tvirns forth her silver lining on the night.

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite
extinct; a badge of better days; a hint of
nobility:— and, doubtless, under the obscur-
ing darkness and double night of their for-

258

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS

lorn disguisementj oftentimes lurketh good
blood and gentle conditions, derived from
lost ancestry and a lapsed pedigree. The
premature apprenticements of these tender
victims give but too much encouragement,
I fear, to clandestine and almost infantile
abductions; the seeds of civility and true
courtesy, so often discernible in these
young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted
for), plainly hint at some forced adoptions;
many noble Rachels mourning for their
children, even in our days, countenance the
fact; the tales of fairy spiriting may shadow
a lamentable verity, and the recovery of the
young Montagu be but a solitary instance
of good fortune out of many irreparable
and hopeless defiliations.

In one of the state beds at Arundel
Castle, a few years since— under a ducal
canopy— (that seat of the Howards is an
object of curiosity to visitors, chieily for its
beds, in which the late duke was especially
a connoisseur)— encircled with curtains of
delicatest crimson, with starry coronets
inwoven— folded between a pair of sheets
whiter and softer than the lap where
Venus lulled Ascanius— was discovered by
chance, after all methods of search had
failed, at noonday, fast asleep, a lost chim-
ney-sweeper. The little creature, having
259

ESSAYS OF ELIA

somehow confounded his passage among
the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by
some unknown aperture had alighted upon
this magnificent chamber; and, tired with
his tedious explorations, was unable to re-
sist the delicious invitement to repose,
which he there saw exhibited; so creeping
between the sheets very quietly, laid his
black head upon the pillow, and slept like
a young Howard.

Such is the account given to the visitors
at the Castle.— But I cannot help seeming
to perceive a confirmation of what I had
just hinted at in this story. A high in-
stinct was at work in the case, or I am
mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child
of that description, with whatever weari-
ness he might be visited, would have ven-
tured, under such a penalty as he would be
taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of
a Duke's bed, and deliberately to lay him-
self down between them, when the rug, or
the carpet, presented an obvious couch,
still far above his pretensions— is this
probable, I would ask, if the great power of
nature, which I contend for, had not been
manifested within him, prompting to the
adventure? Doubtless this young noble-
man (for such my mind misgives me that
he must be) was allured by some memory,
260

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS

not amounting to full consciousness, of his
condition in infancy, when he was used to
be lapped by his mother, or his nurse, in
just such sheets as he there found, into
which he was now but creeping back as
into his proper incunabula and resting-
place.— By no other theory than by this
sentiment of a preexistent state (as I may
call it), can I explain a deed so venturous,
and, indeed, upon any other system, so in-
decorous, in this tender, but unseasonable,
sleeper.

My pleasant friend Jem White was so
impressed with a belief of metamorphoses
like this frequently taking place, that in
some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune
in these poor changelings, he instituted an
annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at which
it was his pleasure to officiate as host and
waiter. It was a solemn supper held in
Smithfield, upon the yearly return of the
fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards were issued
a week before to the master-sweeps in and
about the metropolis, confining the invita-
tion to their younger fry. Now and then
an elderly stripling would get in among us,
and be good-naturedly winked at; but our
main body were infantry. One unfortunate
wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky
suit, had intruded himself into our party,
261

ESSAYS OF ELIA

but by tokens was providentially discovered
in time to be no chimney-sweeper (ail is
not soot which looks so), was quoited out
of the presence with universal indignation,
as not having on the wedding garment; but
in general the greatest harmony prevailed.
The place chosen was a convenient spot
among the pens, at the north side of the
fair, not so far distant as to be impervious
to the agreeable hubbub of that vanity, but
remote enough not to be obvious to the in-
terruption of every gaping spectator in it.
The guests assembled about seven. In
those little temporary parlors three tables
were spread with napery, not so fine as sub-
stantial, and at every board a comely hos-
tess presided with her pan of hissing sau-
sages. The nostrils of the young rogues
dilated at the savor. James White, as head
waiter, had charge of the first table; and
myself, with our trusty companion Bigod,
ordinarily ministered to the other two.
There was clambering and jostling, you
may be sure, who should get at the first
table— for Rochester in his maddest days
could not have done the humors of the
scene with more spirit than my friend.
After some general expression of thanks
for the honor the company had done him,
his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the
262

THE PRAISE OP CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS

greasy waist of old dame Ursula (the fat-
test of the three), that stood frying and
fretting, half blessing, half cursing "the
gentleman," and imprint upon her chaste
lips a tender salute, whereat the universal
host would set up a shout that tore the
concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth
startled the night with their brightness.
0 it was a pleasure to see the sable youn-
kers lick in the unctuous meat, with his
more unctuous sayings— how he would fit
the titbits to the puny mouths, reserving
the lengthier links for the seniors— how he
would intercept a morsel even in the jaws
of some young desperado, declaring it
"must to the pan again to be browned, for
it was not fit for a gentleman's eating"—
how he would recommend this slice of
white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust,
to a tender juvenile, advising them all to
have a care of cracking their teeth, which
were their best patrimony,— how genteelly
he would deal about the small ale, as if it
were wine, naming the brewer, and protest-
ing, if it were not good, he should lose their
custom; with a special recommendation to
wipe the lip before drinking. Then we had
our toasts-" the King,"— "the Cloth,"-
which, whether they understood or not, was
equally diverting and flattering;— and for a
263

ESSAYS OF ELIA

crowning sentiment, which never failed,
"May the Brush supersede the Laurel!"
All these, and fifty other fancies, which
were rather felt than comprehended by his
guests, would he utter, standing upon
tables, and prefacing every sentiment with
a " Gentlemen, give me leave to propose so-
and-so," which was a prodigious comfort to
those young orphans; every now and then
stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to
be squeamish on these occasions) indis-
criminate pieces of those reeking sausages,
which pleased them mightily, and was the
savoriest part, you may believe, of the en-
tertainment.

Golden lads and lasses must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust-
James White is extinct, and with him
these suppers have long ceased. He carried
away with him half the fun of the world
when he died— of my world at least. His
old clients look for him among the pens;
and, missing him, reproach the altered feast
of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smith-
field departed forever.

264

A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF
BEGGARS,

IN THE METROPOLIS

THE all-sweeping besom of socletarian
reformation— your only modern Al-
cides' club to rid the time of its
abuses— is uplift with many-handed sway
to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of
the bugbear Mendicity from the metropo-
lis. Scrips, wallets, bags— staves, dogs,
and crutches— the whole mendicant fra-
ternity, with all their baggage, are fast
posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh
persecution. From the crowded crossing,
from the corners of streets and turnings of
alleys, the parting Genius of Beggary is
"with sighing sent."

I do not approve of this wholesale going
to work, this impertinent crusado, or bel-
lum ad exterminationem, proclaimed against
a species. Much good might be sucked
from these Beggars.

They were the oldest and the honorablest

form of pauperism. Their appeals were to

our common nature; less revolting to an

ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant to

265

ESSAYS OF ELIA

the particular humors or caprice of any fel-
low-creature, or set of fellow-creatures,
parochial or societarian. Theirs were the
only rates uninvidious in the levy, un-
grudged in the assessment.

There was a dignity springing from the
very depth of their desolation; as to be
naked is to he so much nearer to the being
a man, than to go in livery.

The greatest spirits have felt this in
their reverses; and when Dionysius from
king turned schoolmaster, do we feel
anything towards him but contempt?
Could Vandyke have made a picture of him,
swaying a ferula for a scepter, which would
have affected our minds with the same he-
roic pity, the same compassionate admira-
tion, with which we regard his Belisarius
begging for an obolus ? Would the moral
have been more graceful, more pathetic?

The Blind Beggar in the legend— the
father of pretty Bessy— whose story dog-
gerel rhymes and ale-house signs cannot so
degrade or attenuate but that some sparks
of a lustrous spirit will shine through the
disguisements— this noble Earl of Cornwall
(as indeed he was) and memorable sport of
fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence
of his liege lord, stript of all, and seated on
the flowering green of Bethnal, with his
266

THE DECAY OF BEGGARS

more fresh and springing daughter by his
side, illumining his rags and his beggary-
would the child and parent have cut a bet-
ter figure doing the honors of a counter, or
expiating their fallen condition upon the
three-foot eminence of some sempstering
shop-board?

In tale or history your Beggar is ever the
just antipode to your King. The poets and
romancical writers (as dear Margaret New-
castle would call them), when they would
most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse
of fortune, never stop till they have brought
down their hero in good earnest to rags
and the wallet. The depth of the descent
illustrates the height he falls from. There
is no medium which can be presented to
the imagination without offense. There is
no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from
his palace, must divest him of his gar-
ments, till he answer " mere nature ";
and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love,
must extend her pale arms, pale with
other whiteness than of beauty, sup-
plicating lazar alms with bell and clap-
dish.

The Lucian wits knew this very well;

and, with a converse policy, when they

would express scorn of greatness without

the pity, they show us an Alexander in the

267

ESSAYS OF ELIA

shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis get-
ting up foul linen.

How would it sound in song, that a great
monarch had declined his affections upon
the daughter of a baker! yet do we feel the
imagination at all violated when we read
the "true ballad," where King Cophetua
wooes the beggar maid?

Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are ex-
pressions of pity, but pity alloyed with con-
tempt. No one properly contemns a Beg-
gar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and
each degree of it is mocked by its " neigh-
bor grice." Its poor rents and comings-in
are soon summed up and told. Its pre-
tenses to property are almost ludicrous.
Its pitiful attempts to save excite a smile.
Every scornful companion can weigh his
trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man
reproaches poor man in the streets with
impolitic mention of his condition, his own
being a shade better, while the rich pass by
and jeer at both. No rascally comparative
insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing
purses with him. He is not in the scale of
comparison. He is not under the measure
of property. He confessedly hath none,
any more than a dog or a sheep. No one
twitteth him with ostentation above his
means. No one accuses him of pride, or
268

THE DECAY OF BEGGARS

upbraideth him with mock humihty. None
Jostle with him for the wall, or pick quar-
rels for precedency. No wealthy neighbor
seeketh to eject him from his tenement.
No man sues him. No man goes to law
with him. If I were not the independent
gentleman that I am, rather than I would
be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or
a poor relation, I would choose, out of the
delicacy and true greatness of my mind, to
be a Beggar.

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty,
are the Beggar's robes, and graceful insig-
nia of his profession, his tenure, his full
dress, the suit in which he is expected to
show himself in public. He is never out of
the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind
it. He is not required to put on court
mourning. He weareth all colors, fearing
none. His costume hath undergone less
change than the Quaker's. He is the only
man in the universe who is not obliged to
study appearances. The ups and downs of
the world concern him no longer. He alone
continueth in one stay. The price of stock
or land affecteth him not. The fluctua-
tions of agricultural or commercial pros-
perity touch him not, or at worst but
change his customers. He is not expected
to become bail or surety for any one. No
269

ESSAYS OF ELIA

man troubleth him with questioning his
religion or poHtics. He is the only free
man in the universe.

The Mendicants of this great city were
so many of her sights, her lions. I can no
more spare them than I could the Cries of
London. No corner of a street is complete
without them. They are as indispensable
as the Ballad Singer; and in their pictur-
esque attire as ornamental as the signs
of old London. They were the standing
morals, emblems, mementos, dial-mot-
tos, the spital sermons, the books for
children, the salutary checks and pauses to
the high and rushing tide of greasy citi-
zenry—

—Look

Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there.

Above all, those old blind Tobits that
used to line the wall of Lincoln's Inn Gar-
den, before modern fastidiousness had ex-
pelled them, casting up their ruined orbs
to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of
light, with their faithful Dog Guide at
their feet,— whither are they fled? or into
what corners, blind as themselves, have
they been driven, out of the wholesome air
and sun-warmth? immersed between four
walls, in what withering poorhouse do
270

THE DECAY OF BEGGARS

they endure the penalty of double dark-
ness, where the chink of the dropt half-
penny no more consoles their forlorn be-
reavement, far from the sound of the
cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the
passenger? Where hang their useless
staves? and who will farm their dogs?—

Have the overseers of St. L caused

them to be shot? or were they tied up in
sacks and dropt into the Thames, at the

suggestion of B the mild rector of ?

Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vin-
cent Bourne, most classical, and, at the
same time, most English of the Latinists!
—who has treated of this human and quad-
rupedal alliance, this dog and man friend-
ship, in the sweetest of his poems, the
Epitaphium in Canera, or Dog's Epitaph.
Reader, peruse it; and say, if customary
sights, which could call up such gentle
poetry as this, were of a nature to do more
harm or good to the moral sense of the
passengers through the daily thorough-
fares of a vast and busy metropolis.

Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciseus, lierilis,
Dunx vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectse,
Dux eseco fidus : nee, me dueente, solebat,
Prsetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua

locorum
Incertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus,
Quae dubios regerent passiis, vestigia tuta

271

ESSAYS OF ELIA

Fixit inofifenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile
In nudo nactus saxo, qua prsetereuntium
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam.
Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter,
Quels corda et mentem indiderat natura benig-

nam.
Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile,
Vel mediis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa
Auresque atque animum arrectus, sen frustula

amicfe
Porrexit sociasque dapes, sen longa diei
Tsedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat.
Hi mores, hsec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant,
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte se-

necta
Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite csecum
Orbavit dominum ; prisci sed gratia facti
Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per annos,
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit,
Etsi inopis, non ingratse, munuscula dextrse ;
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque ca-

nemque,
Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque

benignum.

Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie,

That wont to tend my old blind master's steps.

His guide and guard; nor, while my service

lasted.
Had he occasion for that staff, with which
He now goes picking out his path in fear
Over the highways and crossings; but would

plant.
Safe in the conduct of my friendly string,
A firm foot forward still, till he had reach' d

272

THE DECAY OP BEGGARS

His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide
Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd :
To whom with loud and passionate laments
From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd.
Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there,
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave.
I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ;
Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear
Prick' d up at his least motion ; to receive
At his kind hand my customary crumbs,
And common portion in his feast of scraps ;
Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and

spent
With our long day and tedious beggary.

These were my raanners, this my way of life
Till age and slow disease me overtook,
And sever' d from my sightless master's side.
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die.
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost^
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared.
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand.
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest.
In long and lasting union to attest,
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog.

These dim eyes have in vain explored for
some months past a well-known figure, or
part of the figure, of a man, who used to
glide his comely upper half over the pave-
ments of London, wheeling along with most
ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood;
a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to
children. He was of a robust make, with a
florid sailor-like complexion, and his head
was bare to the storm and sunshine. He
IS 273

ESSAYS OF ELIA

was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the
scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The
infant would stare at the mighty man
brought down to his own level. The com-
mon cripple would despise his own pusil-
lanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and
hearty heart, of this half-limbed giant.
Few but must have noticed him; for the
accident which brought him low took place
during the riots of 1780, and he has been a
groundling so long. He seemed earth-born,
an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigor from
the soil which he neighbored. He was a
grand fragment; as good as an Elgin mar-
ble. The nature, which should have re-
cruited his reft legs and thighs, was not
lost, but only retired into his upper parts,
and he was half a Hercules. I heard a
tremendous voice thundering and growling,
as before an earthquake, and casting down
my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a
steed that had started at his portentous
appearance. He seemed to want but his
just stature to have rent the offending
quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-
part of a centaur, from which the horse-
half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan
controversy. He moved on, as if he could
have made shift with yet half of the body-
portion which was left him. The os sub-
274

THE DECAY OF BEGGARS

lime was not wanting; and he threw out
yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens.
Forty-and-two years had he driven this
out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is
grizzled in the service, but his good spirits
no way impaired, because he is not content
to exchange his free air and exercise for the
restraints of a poorhouse, he is expiating
his contumacy in one of those houses
(ironically christened) of Correction.

Was a daily spectacle like this to be
deemed a nuisance, which called for legal
interference to remove? or not rather a
salutary and a touching object to the pass-
ers-by in a great city? Among her shows,
her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping
curiosity (and what else but an accumula-
tion of sights— endless sights— is a great
city; or for what else is it desirable?) was
there not room for one Lusus (not Naturce,
indeed, but) Accidentium ? What if, in
forty-and-two-years' going about, the man
had scraped together enough to give a por-
tion to his child (as the rumor ran) of a few
hundreds— whom had he injured?— whom
had he imposed upon? The contributors
had enjoyed their sight for their pennies.
What if after being exposed all day to the
heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven
—shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an
275

ESSAYS OF ELIA

elaborate and painful motion— he was en-
abled to retire at night to enjoy himself at
a club of his fellow-cripples over a dish of
hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was
gravely brought against him by a clergy-
man deposing before a House of Commons'
Committee— was this,orwas his truly pater-
nal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved
a statue rather than a whipping-post, and
is inconsistent, at least, with the exaggera-
tion of nocturnal orgies which he has been
slandered with— a reason that he should be
deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay,
edifying way of life, and be committed in
hoary age for a sturdy vagabond?—

There was a Yorick once, whom it would
not have shamed to have sate down at the
cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his
benediction, aye, and his mite too, for a com-
panionable symbol. "Age, thou has lost
thy breed."—

Half of these stories about the prodigious
fortunes made by begging are (I verily be-
lieve) misers' calumnies. One was much
talked of in the public papers some time
since, and the usual charitable inferences
deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised
with the announcement of a five-hundred-
pound legacy left him by a person whose
name he was a stranger to. It seems that
276

THE DECAY OF BEGGARS

in his daily morning walks from Peckham
(or some village thereabouts) where he lived,
to his office, it had been his practice for the
last twenty years to drop his halfpenny
duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus,
that sate begging alms by the wayside in
the Borough. The good old beggar recog-
nized his daily benefactor by the voice
only; and, when he died, left all the amass-
ings of his alms (that had been half a cen-
tury perhaps in the accumulating) to his
old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse
up people's hearts, and pennies, 'against
giving an alms to the blind?— or not rather
a beautiful moral of well-directed charity
on the one part, and noble gratitude upon
the other?

I sometimes wish I had been that Bank
clerk.

I seem to remember a poor old grateful
kind of creature, blinking and looking up
with his no eyes in the sun—

Is it possible I could have steeled my
purse against him?

Perhaps I had no small change.

Reader, do not be frightened at the hard
words imposition, imposture— ^rive, and ask
no questions. Cast thy bread upon the
waters. Some have unawares (like this
Bank clerk) entertained angels.
277

ESSAYS OF ELIA

Shut not thy purse-strings always against
painted distress. Act a charity sometimes.
When a poor creature (outwardly and visi-
bly such) comes before thee, do not stay to
inquire whether the " seven small children,"
in whose name he implores thy assistance,
have a veritable existence. Rake not into
the bowels of unwelcome truth to save a
halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If
he be not all that he pretendeth, give, and
under a personate father of a family think
(if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an
indigent bachelor. When they come with
their counterfeit looks and mumping tones,
think them players. You pay your money
to see a comedian feign these things, which,
concerning these poor people, thou canst
not certainly tell whether they are feigned
or not.

278

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

MANKIND, says a Chinese manu-
script, which my friend M. was
obliging enough to read and explain
to me, for the first seventy thousand ages
ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it
from the living animal, just as they do in
Abyssinia to this day. This period is not
obscurely hinted at by their great Confu-
cius in the second chapter of his Mundane
Mutations, where he designates a kind of
golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally
the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes
on to say, that the art of roasting, or
rather broiling (which I take to be the elder
brother), was accidentally discovered in the
manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti,
having gone out into the woods one morn-
ing, as his manner was, to collect mast for
his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his
eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who
being fond of playing with fire, as younkers
of his age commonly are, let some sparks
escape into a bundle of straw, which kin-
dling quickly, spread the conflagration over
279

ESSAYS OF ELIA

every part of their poor mansion, till it was
reduced to ashes. Together with the cot-
tage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a
building, you may think it), what was of
much more importance, a fine litter of new-
farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number,
perished. China pigs have been esteemed
a luxury all over the East, from the re-
motest periods that we read of. Bo-bo
was in the utmost consternation, as you
may think, not so much for the sake of the
tenement, which his father and he could
easily build up again with a few dry
branches, and the labor of an hour or two,
at any time, as for the loss of the pigs.
While he was thinking what he should say
to his father, and wringing his hands over
the smoking remnants of one of those
untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his
nostrils, unlike any scent which he had be-
fore experienced. What could it proceed
from?— not from the burnt cottage— he had
smelt that smell before— indeed, this was
by no means the first accident of the kind
which had occurred through the negligence
of this unlucky young firebrand. Much
less did it resemble that of any known herb,
weed, or flower. A premonitory moisten-
ing at the same time overflowed his nether
lip. He knew not what to think. He next
280

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

stooped down to feel the pig, if there were
any signs of hfe in it. He burnt his fingers,
and to cool them he applied them in his
booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the
crumbs of the scorched skin had come away
with his fingers, and for the first time in
his life (in the world's life indeed, for before
him no man had known it) he tasted—
crackling ! Again he felt and fumbled at
the pig. It did not burn him so much now,
still he licked his fingers from a sort of
habit. The truth at length broke into his
slow understanding, that it was the pig
that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so
delicious; and surrendering himself up to
the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing
up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with
the flesh next it, and was cramming it down
his throat in his beastly fashion, when his
sire entered amid the smoking rafters,
armed with retributory cudgel, and finding
how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon
the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as
hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any
more than if they had been flies. The
tickling pleasure, which he experienced in
his lower regions, had rendered him quite
callous to any inconveniences he might feel
in those remote quarters. His father
might lay on, but he could not beat him
281

ESSAYS OP ELI A

from his pig, till he had fairly made an end
of it, when, becoming a little more sensible
of his situation, something like the follow-
ing dialogue ensued.

"You graceless whelp, what have you
got there devouring? Is it not enough
that you have burnt me down three houses
with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to
you! but you must be eating fire, and I
know not what— what have you got there,
I say?"

"0 father, the pig, the pig! do come and
taste how nice the burnt pig eats."

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror.
He cursed his son, and he cursed himself
that ever he should beget a son that should
eat burnt pig.

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully
sharpened since morning, soon raked out
another pig, and fairly rending it asunder,
thrust the lesser half by main force into
the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat,
eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste—
O Lord!"— with such-like barbarous ejacu-
lations, cramming all the while as if he
would choke.

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he

grasped the abominable thing, wavering

whether he should not put his son to death

for an unnatural young monster, when the

282

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

crackling scorching his fingers, as it had
done his son's, and applying the same
remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some
of its flavor, which, make what sour
mouths he would for a pretense, proved not
altogether displeasing to him. In conclu-
sion (for the manuscript here is a little
tedious), both father and son fairly sat
down to the mess, and never left off till
they had despatched all that remained of
the litter.

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the
secret escape, for the neighbors would cer-
tainly have stoned them for a couple of
abominable wretches, who could think of
improving upon the good meat which God
had sent them. Nevertheless, strange
stories got about. It was observed that
Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more
frequently than ever. Nothing but fires
from this time forward. Some would break
out in broad day, others in the night-time.
As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was
the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and
Ho-ti himself, which was the more remark-
able, instead of chastising his son, seemed
to grow more indulgent to him than ever.
At length they were watched, the terrible
mystery discovered, and father and son
summoned to take their trial at Pekin,
283

ESSAYS OF ELIA

then an inconsiderable assize town. Evi-
dence was given, the obnoxious food itself
produced in court, and verdict about to be
pronounced, when the foreman of the jury
begged that some of the burnt pig, of
which the culprits stood accused, might be
handed into the box. He handled it, and
they all handled it; and burning their fin-
gers, as Bo-bo and his father had done be-
fore them, and nature prompting to each of
them the same remedy, against the face of
all the facts, and the clearest charge which
judge had ever given,— to the surprise of
the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, re-
porters, and all present,— without leaving
the box, or any manner of consultation
whatever, they brought in a simultaneous
verdict of Not Guilty.

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow,
winked at the manifest iniquity of the de-
cision; and when the court was dismissed,
went privily and bought up all the pigs
that could be had for love or money. In a
few days his Lordship's town-house was
observed to be on fire. The thing took
wing, and now there was nothing to be seen
but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs
grew enormously dear all over the district.
The insurance-ofiices one and all shut up
shop. People built slighter and slighter
284

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

every day, until it was feared that the very
science of architecture would in no long
time be lost to the world. Thus this cus-
tom of firing houses continued, till in pro-
cess of time, says my manuscript, a sage
arose, like our Locke, who made a discov-
ery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any
other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as
they called it) without the necessity of con-
suming a whole house to dress it. Then
first began the rude form of a gridiron.
Roasting by the string or spit came in a
century or two later, I forget in whose
dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes
the manuscript, do the most useful, and
seemingly the most obvious, arts make
their way among mankind—

Without placing too implicit faith in the
account above given, it must be agreed that
if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an
experiment as setting houses on fire (es-
pecially in these days) could be assigned in
favor of any culinary object, that pretext
and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG.

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus
edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most
delicate— prineeps obsoniorum.

I speak not of your grown porkers—
things between pig and pork— those hobble-
dehoys—but a young and tender suckling
285

ESSAYS OP ELIA

—under a moon old— guiltless as yet of the
sty— with no original speck of the amor
immunditioe, the hereditary failing of the
first parent, yet manifest— his voice as yet
not broken, but something between a child-
ish treble and a grumble— the mild fore-
runner or prceludium of a grunt.

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant
that our ancestors ate them seethed, or
boiled— but what a sacrifice of the exterior
tegument.

There is no flavor comparable, I will con-
tend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-
watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it
is well called— the very teeth are invited to
their share of the pleasure at this banquet
in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance—
with the adhesive oleaginous— O call it not
fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing
up to it— the tender blossoming of fat— fat
cropped in the bud— taken in the shoot-
in the first innocence— the cream and quin-
tessence of the child-pig's yet pure food—
the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal man-
na—or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be
so) so blended and running into each other,
that both together make but one ambrosian
result or common substance.

Behold him while he is doing— it seemeth
rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorch-
286

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

ing heat, that he is so passive to. How
equably he twirleth round the string!— Now
he is just done. To see the extreme sensi-
bihty of that tender age! he hath wept out
his pretty eyes— radiant jellies— shooting
stars.—

See him in the dish, his second cradle,
how meek he lieth!— wouldst thou have had
this innocent grow up to the grossness
and indocility which too often accompany
maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would
have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obsti-
nate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all
manner of filthy conversation— from these
sins he is happily snatched away—

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care—

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curs-
eth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the
rank bacon— no coal-heaver bolteth him in
reeking sausages— he hath a fair sepulcher
in the grateful stomach of the judicious
epicure— and for such a tomb might be con-
tent to die.

He is the best of sapors. Pineapple is
great. She is indeed almost too transcen-
dent—a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to
sinning, that really a tender-conscienced
person would do well to pause— too ravish-
287

ESSAYS OP ELIA

ing for mortal taste, she woundeth and
excoriateth the lips that approach her—
like lovers' kisses, she biteth— she is a
pleasure bordering on pain from the fierce-
ness and insanity of her relish— but she
stoppeth at the palate— she meddleth not
with the appetite— and the coarsest hunger
might barter her consistently for a mut-
ton-chop.

Pig— let me speak his praise— is no less
provocative of the appetite than he is sat-
isfactory to the criticalness of the censori-
ous palate. The strong man may batten
on him, and the weakling refuseth not his
mild juices.

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a
bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably in-
tertwisted, and not to be unraveled without
hazard, he is— good throughout. No part
of him is better or worse than another.
He helpeth, as far as his little means ex-
tend, all around. He is the least envious
of banquets. He is all neighbors' fare.

I ain one of those who freely and un-
grudgingly impart a share of the good
things of this life which fall to their lot
(few as mine are in this kind) to a friend.
I protest I take as great an interest in my
friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper
satisfactions, as in mine own. " Presents,"
288

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

I often say, "endear Absents." Hares,
pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door
chickens (those " tame villatic fowl "), ca-
pons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I
dispense as freely as I receive them. I love
to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue
of my friend. But a stop must be put some-
where. One would not, like Lear, "give
everything." I make my stand upon pig.
Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver
of all good flavors to extra-domiciliate, or
send out of the house slightingly (under
pretext of friendship, or I know not what),
a blessing so particularly adapted, predes-
tined, I may say, to my individual palate.—
It argues an insensibility.

I remember a touch of conscience in this
kind at school. My good old aunt, who
never parted from me at the end of a holi-
day without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some
nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed
me one evening with a smoking plum-cake,
fresh from the oven. In my way to school
(it was over London Bridge) a gray-headed
old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at
this time of day, that he was a counter-
feit). I had no pence to console him with,
and in the vanity of self-denial, and the
very coxcombry of charity, school-boy like,
I made him a present of— the whole cake!
1^ 289

ESSAYS OP ELIA

I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on
such occasions, with a sweet soothing of
self-satisfaction; but, before I had got to
the end of the bridge, my better feelings
returned, and I burst into tears, thinking
how ungrateful I had been to my good
aunt, to go and give her good gift away to
a stranger that I had never seen before, and
who might be a bad man for aught I knew;
and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt
would be taking in thinking that I— I my-
self, and not another— would eat her nice
cake— and what should I say to her the
next time I saw her— how naughty I was to
part with her pretty present! — and the odor
of that spicy cake came back upon my recol-
lection, and the pleasure and the curiosity
I had taken in seeing her make it, and her
joy when she sent it to the oven, and how
disappointed she would feel that I had never
had a bit of it in my mouth at last— and I
blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-giv-
ing, and out-of -place hypocrisy of goodness;
and above all I wished never to see the face
again of that insidious, good-for-nothing,
old gray impostor.

Our ancestors were nice in their method
of sacrificing these tender victims. We
read of pigs whipt to death with something
of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete
custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or
290

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

it would be curious to inquire (in a philo-
sophical light merely) what effect this pro-
cess might have towards intenerating and
dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild
and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It
looks like refining a violet. Yet we should
be cautious, while we condemn the inhu-
manity, how we censure the wisdom of the
practice. It might impart a gusto.—

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon
by the young students, when I was at St.
Omer's, and maintained with much learn-
ing and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether,
supposing that the flavor of a pig who ob-
tained his death by whipping {per flag ella-
tionem extremam) superadded a pleasure
upon the palate of a man more intense than
any possible suffering we can conceive in
the animal, is man justified in using that
method of putting the animal to death?"
I forget the decision.

His sauce should be considered. De-
cidedly, a few bread-crumbs, done up with
his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage.
But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you,
the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole
hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots,
stuff them out with plantations of the rank
and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them,
or make them stronger than they are— but
consider, he is a weakling— a flower.
291

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE
BEHAVIOR OP MARRIED PEOPLE

AS a single man, I have spent a good

/\ deal of my time in noting down the
A. \^ infirmitiesof Married People, to con-
sole myself for those superior pleasures,
which they tell me I have lost by remaining
as I am.

I cannot say that the quarrels of men
and their wives ever made any great im-
pression upon me, or had much tendency
to strengthen me in those anti-social reso-
lutions which I took up long ago upon more
substantial considerations. What oftenest
offends me at the houses of married per-
sons where I visit, is an error of quite a
different description;— it is that they are
too loving.

Not too loving neither: that does not ex-
plain my meaning. Besides, why should
that offend me ? The very act of separating
themselves from the rest of the world, to
have the fuller enjoyment of each other's
society, implies that they prefer one another
to all the world.

292

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT

But ."'■hat I complain of is, that they carry
this preirorence so undisguisedly, they perk
it up in thQ faces of us single people so
shamelessly, yon cannot be in their com-
pany a moment without being made to feel,
by some indirect hint or open avowal, that
you are not the object of this preference.
Now there are some things which give no
offense, while implied or taken for granted
merely; but expressed, there is much offense
in them. If a man were to accost the first
homely featured or plain-dressed young
woman of his acquaintance, and tell her
bluntly, that she was not handsome or rich
enough for him, and he could not marry her,
he would deserve to be kicked for his ill
manners; yet no less is implied in the fact,
that having access and opportunity of put-
ting the question to her, he has never yet
thought fit to do it. The young woman
understands this as clearly as if it were put
into words; but no reasonable young woman
would think of making this the ground of
a quarrel. Just as little right have a mar-
ried couple to tell me by speeches, and looks
that are scarce less plain than speeches,
that I am not the happy man,— the lady's
choice. It is enough that I know I am not:
I do not want this perpetual reminding.

The display of superior knowledge or
293

ESSAYS OF ELIA

riches may be made sufficiently moi'tifying,
but these admit of a palhative. Tae know-
ledge which is brought out to insult me, may
accidentally improve nie; and in the rich
man's houses and pictureSj— his parks and
gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at
least. But the display of married happi-
ness has none of these palliatives: it is
throughout pure, unrecompensed, unquali-
fied insult.

Marriage .'.y its best title is a monopoly,
and not of the least invidious sort. It is
the cunning of most possessors of any ex-
clusive privilege to keep their advantage as
much out of sight as possible, that their
less favored neighbors, seeing little of the
benefit, may the less be disposed to ques-
tion the right. But these married monop-
olists thrust the most obnoxious part of
their patent into our faces.

Nothing is to me more distasteful than
that entire complacency and satisfaction
which beam in the countenances of a new-
married couple,— in that of the lady particu-
larly: it tells you, that her lot is disposed of
in this world: that you can have no hopes
of her. It is true, I have none: nor wishes
either, perhaps: but this is one of those
truths which ought, as I said before, to be
taken for granted, not expressed.
294

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT

The excessive airs which those people
give themselves, founded on the ignorance
of us unmarried people, would be more
offensive if they were less irrational. We
will allow them to understand the mysteries
belonging to their own craft better than
we, who have not had the happiness to be
made free of the company: but their arro-
gance is not content within these limits.
If a single person presume to offer his opin-
ion in their presence, though upon the most
indifferent subject, he is immediately
silenced as an incompetent person. Nay,
a young married lady of my acquaintance,
who, the best of the jest was, had not
changed her condition above a fortnight
before, in a question on which I had the
misfortune to differ from her, respecting
the properest mode of breeding oysters for
the London market, had the assurance to
ask with a sneer, how such an old Bachelor
as I could pretend to know anything about
such matters!

But what I have spoken of hitherto is
nothing to the airs which these creatures
give themselves when they come, as they
generally do, to have children. When I
consider how little of a rarity children are,
—that every street and blind alley swarms
with them, —that the poorest people com-
295

ESSAYS OF ELIA

monly have them in most abundance,— that
there are few marriages that are not blest
with at least one of these bargains,— how
often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond
hopes of their parents, taking to vicious
courses, which end in poverty, disgrace,
the gallows, etc.— I cannot for my life tell
what cause for pride there can possibly be
in having them. If they were young phe-
nixes, indeed, that were born but one in a
year, there might be a pretext. But when
they are so common—

I do not advert to the insolent merit
which they assume with their husbands on
these occasions. Let them look to that.
But why we, who are not their natural-born
subjects, should be expected to bring our
spices, myrrh, and incense,— our tribute and
homage of admiration,— I do not see.

"Like as the arrows in the hand of the
giant, even so are the young children";
so says the excellent office in our Prayer-
book appointed for the churching of women.
" Happy is the man that hath his quiver full
of them." So say I; but then don't let him
discharge his quiver upon us that are wea-
ponless;—let them be arrows, but not to
gall and stick us. I have generally observed
that these arrows are double-headed: they
have two forks, to be sure to hit with one
296

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT

or the other. As for instance, where you
come into a house which is full of children,
if you happen to take no notice of them (you
are thinking of something else, perhaps,
and turn a deaf ear to their innocent ca-
resses), you are set down as untractable,
morose, a hater of children. On the other
hand, if you find them more than usually
engaging,— if you are taken with their
pretty manners, and set about in earnest
to romp and play with them, some pretext
or other is sure to he found for sending
them out of the room; they are too noisy

or boisterous, or Mr. does not like

children. With one or other of these forks
the arrow is sure to hit you.

I could forgive their jealousy, and dis-
pense with toying with their brats, if it
gives them any pain; but I think it un-
reasonable to be called upon to love them,
where I see no occasion,— to love a whole
family, perhaps eight, nine, or ten, indis-
criminately,—to love all the pretty dears,
because children are so engaging!

I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love
my dog": that is not always so very prac-
ticable, particularly if the dog be set upon
you to tease you or snap at you in sport.
But a dog, or a lesser thing— any inanimate
substance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring,
297

ESSAYS OF ELIA

a tree, or the place where we last parted
when my friend went away upon a long
absence, I can make shift to love, because
I love him, and anything that reminds me
of him; provided it be in its nature indif-
ferent, and apt to receive whatever hue
fancy can give it. But children have a real
character, and an essential being of them-
selves: they are amiable or unamiableper
se ; I must love or hate them as I see cause
for either in their qualities. A child's na-
ture is too serious a thing to admit of its
being regarded as a mere appendage to an-
other being, and to be loved or hated ac-
cordingly; they stand with me upon their
own stock, as much as men and women do.
Oh! but you will say, sure it is an attrac-
tive age,— there is something in the tender
years of infancy that of itself charms us?
That is the very reason why I am more nice
about them. I know that a sweet child is
the sweetest thing in nature, not even ex-
cepting the delicate creatures which bear
them; but the prettier the kind of a thing
is, the more desirable it is that it should be
pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not
much from another in glory; but a violet
should look and smell the daintiest.— I was
always rather squeamish in my women and
children.

298

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT

But this is not the worst: one must be
admitted into their familiarity at least, be-
fore they can complain of inattention. It
implies visits, and some kind of intercourse.
But if the husband be a man with whom
you have lived on a friendly footing before
marriage— if you did not come in on the
wife's side— if you did not sneak into the
house in her train, but were an old friend
in fast habits of intimacy before their
courtship was so much as thought on,— look
about you— your tenure is precarious— be-
fore a twelvemonth shall roll over your
head, you shall find your old friend gradu-
ally grow cool and altered towards you, and
at last seek opportunities of breaking with
you. I have scarce a married friend of my
acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can
rely, whose friendship did not commence
after the period of his marriage. With
some limitations, they can endure that; but
that the good man should have dared to
enter into a solemn league of friendship in
which they were not consulted, though it
happened before they knew him,— before
they that are now man and wife ever met,
—this is intolerable to them. Every long
friendship, every old authentic intimacy,
must be brought into their office to be new
stamped with their currency, as a sover-
299

ESSAYS OF ELIA

eign prince calls in the good old money
that was coined in some reign before he
was born or thought of, to be new marked
and minted with the stamp of his authority,
before he will let it pass current in the
world. You may guess what luck gener-
ally befalls such a rusty piece of metal
as I am in these new mintings.

Innumerable are the ways which they
take to insult and worm you out of their
husband's confidence. Laughing at all you
say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a
queer kind of fellow that said good things,
but an oddity, is one of the ways;— they have
a particular kind of stare for the purpose;
—till at last the husband, who used to defer
to your judgment, and would pass over some
excrescences of understanding and manner
for the sake of a general vein of observa-
tion (not quite vulgar) which he perceived
in you, begins to suspect whether you are
not altogether a humorist,— a fellow well
enough to have consorted with in his bache-
lor days, but not quite so proper to be intro-
duced to ladies. This may be called the
staring way; and is that which has oftenest
been put in practice against me.

Then there is the exaggerating way, or
the way of irony; that is, where they find
you an object of especial regard with their
300

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT

husband, who is not so easily to be shaken
from the lasting attachment founded on
esteem which he has conceived towards
you, by never qualified exaggerations to cry
up all that you say or do, till the good man,
who understands well enough that it is all
done in compliment to him, grows weary of
the debt of gratitude which is due to so
much candor, and by relaxing a little on his
part, and taking down a peg or two in his
enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly
level of moderate esteem— that "decent
affection and complacent kindness" to-
wards you, where she herself can join in
sympathy with him without much stretch
and violence to her sincerity.

Another way (for the ways they have
to accomplish so desirable a purpose are
infinite) is, with a kind of innocent sim-
plicity, continually to mistake what it was
which first made their husband fond of you.
If an esteem for something excellent in
your moral character was that which riveted
the chain which she is to break, upon any
imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy
in your conversation, she will cry, "I
thought, my dear, you described your

friend, Mr. , as a great wit?" If, on

the other hand, it was for some supposed

charm in your conversation that he first

301

ESSAYS OF ELIA

grew to like you, and was content for this
to overlook some trifling irregularities in
your moral deportment, upon the first no-
tice of any of these she as readily exclaims,

"This, my dear, is your good Mr. !"

One good lady whom I took the liberty of
expostulating with for not showing me
quite so much respect as I thought due
to her husband's old friend, had the candor
to confess to me that she had often heard

Mr. speak of me before marriage, and

that she had conceived a great desire to be
acquainted with me, but that the sight of
me had very much disappointed her expec-
tations; for, from her husband's represen-
tations of me, she had formed a notion that
she was to see a fine, tall, officer-like look-
ing man (I use her very words), the very
reverse of which proved to be the truth.
This was candid; and I had the civility not
to ask her in return, how she came to pitch
upon a standard of personal accomplish-
ments for her husband's friends which
differed so much from his own; for my
friend's dimensions as near as possible ap-
proximate to mine; he standing five feet five
in his shoes, in which I have the advantage
of him by about half an inch; and he no more
than myself exhibiting any indications of a
martial character in his air or countenance.
302

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT

These are some of the mortifications
which I have encountered in the absurd
attempt to visit at their houses. To enu-
merate them all would be a vain endeavor;
I shall therefore just glance at the very-
common impropriety of which married
ladies are guilty,— of treating us as if we
were their husbands, and vice versa. I
mean, when they use us with familiarity,
and their husbands with ceremony. Tes-
tacea, for instance, kept me the other night
two or three hours beyond my usual time
of supping, while she was fretting because

Mr. did not come home, till the oysters

were all spoiled, rather than she would be
guilty of the impoliteness of touching one
in his absence. This was reversing the
point of good manners: for ceremony is
an invention to take off the uneasy feeling
which we derive from knowing ourselves to
be less the object of love and esteem with
a fellow-creature than some other person
is. It endeavors to make up, by superior
attentions in little points, for that invidious
preference which it is forced to deny in the
greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters
back for me, and withstood her husband's
importunities to go to supper, she would
have acted according to the strict rules of
propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies
303

ESSAYS OF ELIA

are bound to observe to their husbands,
beyond the point of a modest behavior and
decorum: therefore I must protest against
the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at
her own table sent away a dish of Morellas,
which I was applying to with great good
will, to her husband at the other end of the
table, and recommended a plate of less ex-
traordinary gooseberries to my unwedded
palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse

the wanton affront of .

But I am weary of stringing up all my
married acquaintance by Roman denomina-
tions. Let them amend and change their
manners, or I promise to record the full-
length English of their names, to the terror
of all such desperate offenders in future.

304

ON SOME OP THE OLD ACTORS

THE casual sight of an old Play Bill,
which I picked up the other day — I
know not by what chance it was pre-
served so long— tempts me to call to mind
a few of the Players, who make the princi-
pal figure in it. It presents the cast of
parts in the Twelfth-Night, at the old
Drury Lane Theater two and thirty years
ago. There is something very touching in
these old remembrances. They make us
think how we once used to read a Play Bill
—not, as now per ad venture, singling out a
favorite performer, and casting a negligent
eye over the rest; but spelling out every
name, down to the very mutes and ser-
vants of the scene;— when it was a matter
of no small moment to us whether Whit-
field, or Packer, took the part of Fabian;
when Benson, and Burton, and Phillimore—
names of small account— had an impor-
tance, beyond what we can be content to
attribute now to the time's best actors.—

"Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore."— What a
full Shaksperian sound it carries! how fresh
20 305

ESSAYS OF ELIA

to memory arise the image and the manner
of the gentle actor! Those who have only
seen Mrs. Jordan within the last ten or
fifteen years, can have no adequate notion
of her performance of such parts as Ophelia;
Helena in All 's Well that Ends Well; and
Viola, in this play. Her voice had latterly
acquired a coarseness, which suited well
enough with her Nells and Hoydens, but in
those days it sank, with her steady, melting
eye, into the heart. Her joyous parts— in
which her memory now chiefly lives— in her
youth were outdone by her plaintive ones.
There is no giving an account how she de-
livered the disguised story of her love for
Orsino. It was no set speech, that she had
foreseen, so as to weave it into an harmo-
nious period, line necessarily following line,
to make up the music— yet I have heard it
so spoken, or rather read, not without its
grace and beauty— but, when she had de-
clared her sister's history to be a "blank,"
and that she "never told her love," there
was a pause, as if the story had ended— and
then the image of the "worm in the bud"
came up as a new suggestion— and the
heightened image of "Patience" still fol-
lowed after that as by some growing (and
not mechanical) process, thought springing
up after thought, I would almost say, as
306

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

they were watered by her tears. So in
those fine lines—

Write loyal cantons of contemned love-
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills-
there was no preparation made in the fore-
going image for that which was to follow.
She used no rhetoric in her passion; or it
was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate
then, when it seemed altogether without
rule or law.

Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in
the pride of her beauty, made an admirable
Olivia. She was particularly excellent in
her unbending scenes in conversation with
the Clown. I have seen some Olivias— and
those very sensible actresses too— who in
these interlocutions have seemed to set
their wits at the jester, and to vie conceits
with him in downright emulation. But she
used him for her sport, like what he was,
to trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and
then to be dismissed, and she to be the
Great Lady still. She touched the imperi-
ous fantastic humor of the character with
nicety. Her fine spacious person filled the
scene.

The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment,
been so often misunderstood, and the gen-
eral merits of the actor, who then played it,
307

ESSAYS OF ELIA

so unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for
pardon, if I am a little prolix upon these
points.

Of all the actors who flourished in my
time— a melancholy phrase if taken aright,
reader— Bensley had most of the swell of
soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic
conceptions, the emotions consequent upon
the presentment of a great idea to the
fancy. He had the true poetical enthusi-
asm—the rarest faculty among players.
None that I remember possessed even a
portion of that fine madness which he threw
out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory,
or the transports of the Venetian incendiary
at the vision of the fired city. His voice
had the dissonance, and at times the in-
spiriting effect, of the trumpet. His gait
was uncouth and stiff, hut no way embar-
rassed by affectation; and the thoroughbred
gentleman was uppermost in every move-
ment. He seized the moment of passion
with greatest truth; like a faithful clock,
never striking before the time; never antici-
pating or leading you to anticipate. He
was totally destitute of trick and artifice.
He seemed come upon the stage to do the
poet's message simply, and he did it with
as genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer
deliver the errands of the gods. He let the
308

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

passion or the sentiment do its own work
without prop or bolstering. He would have
scorned to mountebank it; and betrayed
none of that cleverness which is the bane
of serious acting. For this reason, his lago
was the only endurable one which I remem-
ber to have seen. No spectator, from his
action, could divine more of his artifice than
Othello was supposed to do. His confes-
sions in soliloquy alone put you in pos-
session of the mystery. There were no
by-intimations to make the audience fancy
their own discernment so much greater
than that of the Moor— who commonly
stands like a great helpless mark, set up
for mine Ancient, and a quantity of barren
spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The
lago of Bensley did not go to work so
grossly. There was a triumphant tone
about the character, natural to a general
consciousness of power; but none of that
petty vanity which chuckles and cannot
contain itself upon any little successful
stroke of its knavery— as is common with
your small villains, and green probationers
in mischief. It did not clap or crow before
its time. It was not a man setting his wits
at a child, and winking all the while at other
children, who are mightily pleased at being
let into the secret; but a consummate vil-
309

ESSAYS OF ELIA

lain entrapping a noble nature into toils
against which no discernment was avail-
able, where the manner was as fathomless
as the purpose seemed dark, and without
motive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth
Night, was performed by Bensley with a
richness and a dignity, of which (to judge
from some recent castings of that char-
acter) the very tradition must be worn out
from the stage. No manager in those days
would have dreamed of giving it to Mr.
Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons; when Bensley
was occasionally absent from the theater,
John Kemble thought it no derogation to
succeed to the part. Malvolio is not essen-
tially ludicrous. He becomes comic but by
accident. He is cold, austere, repelling;
but dignified, consistent, and, for what ap-
pears, rather of an overstretched morality.
Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan;
and he might have worn his gold chain with
honor in one of our old Roundhead families,
in the service of a Lambert, or a Lady Fair-
fax. But his morality and his manners are
misplaced in Illyria. He is opposed to the
proper levities of the piece, and falls in the
unequal contest. Still his pride, or his
gravity (call it which you will), is inherent,
and native to the man, not mock or affected,
which latter only are the fit objects to ex-
310

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

cite laughter. His quality is at the best
unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemp-
tible. His bearing is lofty, a little above his
station, but probably not much above his
deserts. We see no reason why he should
not have been brave, honorable, accom-
plished. His careless committal of the ring
to the ground (which he was commissioned
to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity
of birth and feeling. His dialect on all oc-
casions is that of a gentleman and a man of
education. We must not confound him
with the eternal old, low steward of comedy.
He is master of the household to a great
princess; a dignity probably conferred upon
him for other respects than age or length
of service. Olivia, at the first indication of
his supposed madness, declares that she
"would not have him miscarry for half of
her dowry." Does this look as if the char-
acter was meant to appear little or insig-
nificant? Once, indeed, she accuses him to
his face— of what?— of being "sick of self-
love,"— but with a gentleness and consider-
ateness, which could not have been, if she
had not thought that this particular in-
firmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke
to the knight and his sottish revelers is
sensible and spirited; and when we take
into consideration the unprotected condi-
311

ESSAYS OP ELIA

tion of his mistress, and the strict regard
with which her state of real or dissembled
mourning would draw the eyes of the world
upon her house-affairs, Malvolio might feel
the honor of the family in some sort in his
keeping; as it appears not that Olivia had
any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look to
it— for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice
respects at the buttery-hatch. That Mal-
volio was meant to be represented as pos-
sessing estimable qualities, the expression
of the Duke, in his anxiety to have him
reconciled, almost infers: "Pursue him, and
entreat him to a peace." Even in his abused
state of chains and darkness, a sort of
greatness seems never to desert him. He
argues highly and well with the supposed
Sir Topas, and philosophizes gallantly upon
his straw.^ There must have been some
shadow of worth about the man; he must
have been something more than a mere
vapor — a thing of straw, or Jack in ofRce
— before Fabian and Maria could have ven-
tured sending him upon a courting-errand
to Olivia. There was some consonancy (as

1 Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild

fowl?
Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a

bird.
Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion ?
Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his

opinion,

312

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

he would say) in the undertaking, or the
jest would have heen too bold even for that
house of misrule.

Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part
an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked,
spake, and moved like an old Castilian.
He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his
superstructure of pride seemed bottomed
upon a sense of worth. There was some-
thing in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big
and swelling, but you could not be sure that
it was hollow. You might wish to see it
taken down, but you felt that it was upon
an elevation. He was magnificent from the
outset; but when the decent sobrieties of
the character began to give way, and the
poison of self-love, in his conceit of the
Countess's affection, gradually to work, you
would have thought that the hero of La
Mancha in person stood before you. How
he went smiling to himself! with what
ineffable carelessness would he twirl his
gold chain! what a dream it was! you were
infected with the illusion, and did not wish
that it should be removed! you had no room
for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection
of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep
sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's na-
ture, that can lay him open to such frenzies
—but, in truth, you rather admired than
313

ESSAYS OF ELIA

pitied the lunacy while it lasted— you felt
that an hour of such mistake was worth an
age with the eyes open. Who would not
wish to live but for a day in the conceit of
such a lady's love as Olivia? Why, the
Duke would have given his principality but
for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or wak-
ing, to have been so deluded. The man
seemed to tread upon air, to taste manna,
to walk with his head in the clouds, to mate
Hyperion. 0! shake not the castles of his
pride— endure yet for a season, bright
moments of confidence— "stand still, ye
watches of the element," that Malvolio may
be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord!— but fate
and retribution say no — I hear the mis-
chievous titter of Maria— the witty taunts
of Sir Toby— the still more insupportable
triumph of the foolish knight— the coun-
terfeit Sir Topas is unmasked— and "thus
the whirligig of time," as the true clown
hath it, " brings in his revenges." I confess
that I never saw the catastrophe of this
character, while Bensley played it, without
a kind of tragic interest. There was good
foolery too. Few now remember Dodd.
What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him !
Lovegrove, who came nearest to the old
actors, revived the character some few sea-
sons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque;
314

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

but Dodd was it, as it came out of nature's
hands. It might be said to remain in puris
naturalibus. In expressing slowness of
apprehension, this actor surpassed all
others. You could see the first dawn of an
idea stealing slowly over his countenance,
climbing up by little and little, with a pain-
ful process, till it cleared up at last to the
fullness of a twilight conception— its high-
est meridian. He seemed to keep back his
intellect, as some have had the power to
retard their pulsation. The balloon takes
less time in filling than it took to cover the
expansion of his broad moony face over all
its quarters with expression. A glimmer of
understanding would appear in a corner of
his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again.
A part of his forehead would catch a little
intelligence, and be a long time in commu-
nicating it to the remainder.

I am ill at dates, but I think it is now
better than five and twenty years ago, that
walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn— they
were then far finer than they are now— the
accursed Verulam Buildings had not en-
croached upon all the east side of them,
cutting out delicate green crankles, and
shouldering away one of two of the stately
alcoves of the terrace— the survivor stands
gaping and relationless as if it remembered
315

ESSAYS OP ELIA

its brother— they are still the best gardens
of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved
Temple not forgotten— have the gravest
character; their aspect being altogether
reverend and law-breathing— Bacon has
left the impress of his foot upon their gravel
walks— taking my afternoon solace on a
summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, a
comely sad personage came towards me,
whom, from his grave air and deportment,
I judged to be one of the old Benchers of
the Inn. He had a serious, thoughtful
forehead, and seemed to be in meditations
of mortality. As I have an instinctive awe
of old Benchers, I was passing him with
that sort of subindicative token of respect
which one is apt to demonstrate towards a
venerable stranger, and which rather de-
notes an inclination to greet him, than any
positive motion of the body to that effect—
a species of humility and will-worship which
I observe, nine times out of ten, rather
puzzles than pleases the person it is offered
to— when the face turning full upon me
strangely identified itself with that of Dodd.
Upon close inspection I was not mistaken.
But could this sad, thoughtful countenance
be the same vacant face of folly which I
had hailed so often under circumstances of
gaiety; which I had never seen without a
316

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

smile, or recognized but as the usher of
mirth; that looked out so formally flat in
Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so
impotently busy in Backbite; so blankly
divested of all meaning, or resolutely ex-
pressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and
a thousand agreeable impertinences? Was
this the face— full of thought and careful-
ness—that had so often divested itself at
will of every trace of either to give me
diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two
or three hours at least of its furrows ! Was
this the face— manly, sober, intelligent—
which I had so often despised, made mocks
at, made merry with! The remembrance
of the freedoms which I had taken with it
came upon me with a reproach of insult.
I could have asked it pardon. I thought
it looked upon me with a sense of injury.
There is something strange as well as sad
in seeing actors— your pleasant fellows
particularly— subjected to and suffering
the common lot;— their fortunes, their casu-
alties, their deaths, seem to belong to the
scene, their actions to be amenable to poetic
justice only. We can hardly connect them
with more awful responsibilities. The death
of this fine actor took place shortly after
this meeting. He had quitted the stage
some months; and, as I learned afterwards,
317

ESSAYS OP ELIA

had been in the habit of resorting daily to
these gardens, almost to the day of his
decease. In these serious walks, probably,
he was divesting himself of many scenic
and some real vanities— weaning himself
from the frivolities of the lesser and the
greater theater— doing gentle penance for a
life of no very reprehensible fooleries — tak-
ing off by degrees the buffoon mask which
he might feel he had worn too long— and
rehearsing for a more solemn cast of part.
Dying, he "put on the weeds of Dominic." ^
If few can remember Dodd, many yet
living will not easily forget the pleasant
creature, who in those days enacted the
part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew.—
Richard, or rather Dicky Suett— for so in
his lifetime he delighted to be called, and
time hath ratified the appellation — lieth
buried on the north side of the cemetery of
Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage and
tender years were dedicated. There are

1 Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice
collection of old English literature. I should judge him to
have been a man of wit. I know one instance of an im-
promptu which no length of study could have bettered. My
merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one evening in Ague-
cheek, and recognizing Dodd the next day in Fleet Street,
was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as
the identical Knight of the preceding evening with a " Save
you, Sir Andrew." Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this un-
usual address from a stranger, with a courteous half-rebuking,
wave of the hand, put him off with an "Away, Fool."

318

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

who do yet remember him at that period—
his pipe clear and harmonious. He would
often speak of his chorister days, when he
was "cherub Dicky."

What clipped his wings, or made it ex-
pedient that he should exchange the holy
for the profane state; whether he had lost
his good voice (his best recommendation to
that office), like Sir John, "with hallooing
and singing of anthems"; or whether he
was adjudged to lack something, even in
those early years, of the gravity indispen-
sable to an occupation which professeth to
"commerce with the skies,"— I could never
rightly learn; but we find him, after the
probation of a twelvemonth or so, reverting
to a secular condition and become one of us.

I think he was not altogether of that
timber out of which cathedral seats and
sounding-boards are hewed. But if a glad
heart— kind, and therefore glad— be any
part of sanctity, then might the robe of
Motley, with which he invested himself
with so much humility after his depriva-
tion, and which he wore so long with so
much blameless satisfaction to himself and
to the public, be accepted for a surplice—
his white stole, and albe.

The first-fruits of his secularization was
an engagement upon the boards of Old
319

ESSAYS OF ELIA

Drury, at which theater he commenced, as
I have been told, with adopting the manner
of Parsons in old men's characters. At the
period in which most of us knew him, he
was no more an imitator than he was in
any true sense himself imitable.

He was the Robin Goodfellow of the stage.
He came in to trouble all things with a wel-
come perplexity, himself no whit troubled
for the matter. He was known, like Puck, by
his note— Ha! Ha! iJa.^— sometimes deep-
ening to Ho! Ho! Ho! with an irresistible
accession, derived, perhaps, remotely from
his ecclesiastical education, foreign to his
prototype of— 0 La! Thousands of hearts
yet respond to the chuckling 0 La! of Dicky
Suett, brought back to their remembrance
by the faithful transcript of his friend
Mathews's mimicry. The "force of nature
could no further go." He drolled upon the
stock of these two syllables richer than the
cuckoo.

Care, that troubles all the world, was
forgotten in his composition. Had he had
but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he
could never have supported himself upon
those two spider's strings, which served
him (in the latter part of his unmixed
existence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple
must have made him totter, a sigh have
320

ON SOME OP THE OLD ACTORS

puffed him down; the weight of a frown had
staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his
balance. But on he went, scrambling upon
those airy stilts of his, with Robin Good-
fellow, "thorough brake, thorough briar,"
reckless of a scratched face or a torn
doublet.

Shakspere foresaw him, when he framed
his fools and jesters. They have all the
true Suett stamp, a loose and shambling
gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready
midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in
words, light as air, venting truths deep as
the center; with idlest rhymes tagging
conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in
the tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-
hatch.

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to
be more of personal favorites with the town
than any actors before or after. The dif-
ference, I take it, was this:— Jack was more
beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral
pretensions. Dicky was more liked for his
sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all.
Your whole conscience stirred with Bannis-
ter's performance of Walter in the Children
in the Wood— but Dicky seemed like a thing,
as Shakspere says of Love, too young to
know what conscience is. He put us into
Vesta's days. Evil fled before him— not as
21 321

ESSAYS OP ELIA

from Jack, as from an antagonist,— but
because it could not touch him, any more
than a cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered
from the burden of that death; and, when
Death came himself, not in metaphor, to
fetch Dicky, it is recorded of him by Rob-
ert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit,
that he received the last stroke, neither
varying his accustomed tranquillity, nor
tune, with the simple exclamation, worthy
to have been recorded in his epitaph— 0
La! 0 La! Bobby!

The elder Palmer (of stage-treading ce-
lebrity) commonly played Sir Toby in those
days; but there is a solidity of wit in the
jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not
quite fill out. He was as much too showy
as Moody (who sometimes took the part)
was dry and sottish. In sock or buskin
there was an air of swaggering gentility
about Jack Palmer. He was a gentleman
with a slight infusion of the footman. His
brother Bob (of recenter memory), who was
his shadow in everything while he lived,
and dwindled into less than a shadow after-
wards—was a gentleman with a little
stronger infusion of the latter ingredient ;
that was all. It is amazing how a little of
the more or less makes a difference in these
things. When you saw Bobby in the Duke's
322

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

Servant/ you said, "What a pity such a
pretty fellow was only a servant!" When
you saw Jack figuring in Captain Absolute,
you thought you could trace his promotion
to some lady of quality who fancied the
handsome fellow in his topknot, and had
bought him a commission. Therefore Jack
in Dick Amlet was insuperable.

Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypo-
critical, and insinuating; but his secondary
or supplemental voice still more decisively
histrionic than his common one. It was
reserved for the spectator; and the dramatis
personce were supposed to know nothing at
all about it. The lies of Young Wilding, and
the sentiments in Joseph Surface, were thus
marked out in a sort of italics to the audi-
ence. This secret correspondence with the
company before the curtain (which is the
bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely
happy effect in some kinds of comedy, in
the more highly artificial ^comedy of Con-
greve or of Sheridan especially, where the
absolute sense of reality (so indispensable
to scenes of interest) is not required, or
would rather interfere to diminish your
pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe
in such characters as Surface— the villain
of artificial comedy — even while you read or

1 High Life Below Stairs.

323

ESSAYS OF ELIA

see them. If you did, they would shock and
not divert you. When Ben, in Love for
Love, returns from sea, the following ex-
quisite dialogue occurs at his first meeting
with his father:—

Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary
league, Ben, since I saw thee.

Ben. Ey, ey, been. Been far enough, an that
be all.— Well, father, and how do all at home?
how does brother Dick and brother Val?

Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been
dead these two years. I writ you word when you
were at Leghorn.

Ben. Mess, that 's true; Marry, I had forgot.
Dick 's dead, as you say— well, and how?— I have
a many questions to ask you.

Here is an instance of insensibility, which
in real life would be revolting, or rather in
real life could not have coexisted with the
warm-hearted temperament of the char-
acter. But when you read it in the spirit
with which such playful selections and
specious combinations rather than strict
metaphrases of nature should be taken, or
when you saw Bannister play it, it neither
did, nor does, wound the moral sense at all.
For what is Ben— the pleasant sailor which
Bannister gives us— but a piece of satire—
a creation of Congreve's fancy— a dreamy
combination of all the accidents of a sailor's
324

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

character— his contempt of money— his
credulity to women— with that necessary
estrangement from home which it is just
within the verge of credibility to suppose
might produce such an hallucination as is
here described. We never think the worse
of Ben for it, or feel it as a stain upon
his character. But when an actor comes,
and instead of the delightful phantom— the
creature dear to half-belief —which Bannis-
ter exhibited— displays before our eyes a
downright concretion of a Wapping sailor
—a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar— and no-
thing else— when instead of investing it
with a delicious confusedness of the head,
and a veering undirected goodness of pur-
pose—he gives to it a downright daylight
understanding, and a full consciousness of
its actions; thrusting forward the sensi-
bilities of the character with a pretense as
if it stood upon nothing else, and was to be
judged by them alone— we feel the discord
of the thing; the scene is disturbed; a real
man has got in among the dramatis per-
sonoR, and puts them out. We want the
sailor turned out. We feel that his true
place is not behind the curtain, but in the
first or second gallery.

325

ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY
OF THE LAST CENTURY «

THE artificial Comedy, or Comedy of
manners, is quite extinct on our
stage. Congreve and Farquhar show
their heads once in seven years only, to be
exploded and put down instantly. The
times cannot bear them. Is it for a few
wild speeches, an occasional license of dia-
logue? I think not altogether. The busi-
ness of their dramatic characters will not
stand the moral test. We screw everything
up to that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a
dream, the passing pageant of an evening,
startles us in the same way as the alarm-
ing indications of profligacy in a son or ward
in real life should startle a parent or guar-
dian. We have no such middle emotions as
dramatic interests left. We see a stage
libertine playing his loose pranks of two
hours' duration, and of no after conse-
quence, with the severe eyes which inspect
real vices with their bearings upon two
worlds. We are spectators to a plot or
326

COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY

intrigue (not reducible in life to the point
of strict morality), and take it all for truth.
We substitute a real for a dramatic person,
and judge him accordingly. We try him in
our courts, from which there is no appeal
to the dramatis personcBy his peers. We
have been spoiled with— not sentimental
comedy— but a tyrant far more pernicious
to our pleasures which has succeeded to it,
the exclusive and all-devouring drama of
common life; where the moral point is
everything; where, instead of the fictitious
half-believed personages of the stage (the
phantoms of old comedy), we recognize our-
selves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies,
patrons, enemies,— the same as in life,—
with an interest in what is going on so
hearty and substantial, that we cannot
afford our moral judgment, in its deepest
and most vital results, to compromise or
slumber for a moment. What is there
transacting, by no modification is made to
affect us in any other manner than the
same events or characters would do in our
relationships of life. We carry our fireside
concerns to the theater with us. We do
not go thither like our ancestors, to escape
from the pressure of reality, so much as to
confirm our experience of it; to make as-
surance double, and take a bond of fate.
327

ESSAYS OP ELIA

We must live our toilsome lives twice over,
as it was the mournful privilege of Ulysses
to descend twice to the shades. All that
neutral ground of character, which stood
between vice and virtue; or which in fact
was indifferent to neither, where neither
properly was called in question; that happy
breathing-place from the burden of a per-
petual moral questioning— the sanctuary
and quiet Alsatia of hunted casuistry— is
broken up and disfranchised, as injurious
to the interests of society. The privileges
of the place are taken away by law. We dare
not dally with images, or names, of wrong.
We bark like foolish dogs at shadows. We
dread infection from the scenic representa-
tion of disorder, and fear a painted pustule.
In our anxiety that our morality should not
take cold, we wrap it up in a great blanket
surtout of precaution against the breeze
and sunshine.

I confess for myself that (with no great
delinquencies to answer for) I am glad for a
season to take an airing beyond the diocese
of the strict conscience,— not to live always
in the precincts of the law courts,— but now
and then, for a dream-while or so, to ima-
gine a world with no meddling restrictions
—to get into recesses, whither the hunter
cannot follow me—

.328

COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY

—Secret shades

Of woody Ida's inmost grove,

While yet there was no fear of Jove.

I come back to my cage and my restraint
the fresher and more healthy for it. I wear
my shackles more contentedly for having
respired the breath of an imaginary free-
dom. I do not know how it is with others,
but I feel the better always for the perusal
of one of Congreve's— nay, why should I
not add even of Wycherley's — comedies. I
am the gayer at least for it; and I could
never connect those sports of a witty fancy
in any shape with any result to be drawn
from them to imitation in real life. They
are a world of themselves almost as much
as fairy-land. Take one of their characters,
male or female (with few exceptions they
are alike), and place it in a modern play,
and my virtuous indignation shall rise
against the profligate wretch as warmly as
the Catos of the pit could desire; because
in a modern play I am to judge of the right
and the wrong. The standard of police is
the measure of political justice. The atmo-
sphere will blight it; it cannot live here.
It has got into a moral world, where it has
no business, from which it must needs fall
headlong; as dizzy, and incapable of making
a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that
22 329

ESSAYS OP ELIA

has wandered unawares into the sphere of
one of his Good Men, or Angels. But in
its own world do we feel the creature is so
very bad?— The Fainalls and the Mirabels,
the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods,
in their own sphere, do not offend my moral
sense; in fact, they do not appeal to it at
all. They seem engaged in their proper
element. They break through no laws or
conscientious restraints. They know of
none. They have got out of Christen-
dom into the land— what shall I call it?— of
cuckoldry— the Utopia of gallantry, where
pleasure is duty, and the manners perfect
freedom. It is altogether a speculative
scene of things, which has no reference
whatever to the world that is. No good
person can be justly offended as a spectator,
because no good person suffers on the
stage. Judged morally, every character
in these plays— the few exceptions only
are mistakes— is alike essentially vain and
worthless. The great art of Congreve is
especially shown in this, that he has en-
tirely excluded from his scenes— some little
generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps
excepted— not only anything like a faultless
character, but any pretensions to goodness
or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he
did this designedly, or instinctively, the
330

COMEDY OP THE LAST CENTURY

effect is as happy as the design (if design)
was bold. I used to wonder at the strange
power which his Way of the World in partic-
ular possesses of interesting you all along
in the pursuits of characters, for whom you
absolutely care nothing— for you neither
hate nor love his personages— and I think
it is owing to this very indifference for any,
that you endure the whole. He has spread
a privation of moral light, I will call it,
rather than by the ugly name of palpable
darkness, over his creations; and his shad-
ows flit before you without distinction or
preference. Had he introduced a good char-
acter, a single gush of moral feeling, a
revulsion of the judgment to actual life and
actual duties, the impertinent Goshen would
have only lighted to the discovery of de-
formities, which now are none, because we
think them none.

Translated into real life, the characters
of his, and his friend Wycherley's dramas,
are profligates and strumpets,— the busi-
ness of their brief existence, the undivided
pursuit of lawless- gallantry. No other
spring of action, or possible motive of con-
duct, is recognized; principles which, uni-
versally acted upon, must reduce this frame
of things to a chaos. But we do them
wrong in so translating them. No such
331

ESSAYS OF ELIA

effects are produced, in their world. When
we are among them, we are amongst a
chaotic people. We are not to judge them
by our usages. No reverend institutions
are insulted by their proceedings— for they
have none among them. No peace of fami-
lies is violated— for no family ties exist
among them. No purity of the marriage
bed is stained— for none is supposed to have
a being. No deep affections are disquieted,
—no holy wedlock bands are snapped asun-
der—for affection's depth and wedded faith
are not of the growth of that soil. There
is neither right nor wrong,— gratitude or
its opposite,— claim or duty,— paternity or
sonship.— Of what consequence is it to
Virtue, or how is she at all concerned about
it, whether Sir Simon or Dapperwit steal
away Miss Martha; or who is the father of
Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's children?
The whole is a passing pageant, where
we should sit as unconcerned at the issues,
for life or death, as at a battle of the frogs
and mice. But, like Don Quixote, we take
part against the puppets, and quite as im-
pertinently. We dare not contemplate an
Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our cox-
combical moral sense is for a little tran-
sitory ease excluded. We have not the
courage to imagine a state of things for
332

COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY

which there is neither reward nor punish-
ment. We cling to the painful necessities
of shame and blame. We would indict our
very dreams.

Amidst the mortifying circumstances
attendant upon growing old, it is something
to have seen the School for Scandal in its
glory. This comedy grew out of Congreve
and Wycherley, but gathered some allays
of the sentimental comedy which followed
theirs. It is impossible that it should be
now acted, though it continues, at long in-
tervals, to be announced in the bills. Its
hero, when Palmer played it at least, was
Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay
boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility,
the measured step, the insinuating voice
—to express it in a word— the downright
acted villainy of the part, so different from
the pressure of conscious actual wicked-
ness,—the hypocritical assumption of hy-
pocrisy,—which made Jack so deservedly a
favorite in that character, I must needs
conclude the present generation of play-
goers more virtuous than myself, or more
dense. I freely confess that he divided the
palm with me with his better brother; that,
in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but
there are passages,— like that, for instance,
where Joseph is made to refuse a pittance
333

ESSAYS OF ELIA

to a poor relation,— incongruities which
Sheridan was forced upon by the attempt
to join the artificial with the sentimental
comedy, either of which must destroy the
other— but over these obstructions Jack's
manner floated him so lightly, that a re-
fusal from him no more shocked you, than
the easy compliance of Charles gave you in
reality any pleasure; you got over the paltry
question as quickly as you could, to get back
into the regions of pure comedy, where no
cold moral reigns. The highly artificial
manner of Palmer in this character counter-
acted every disagreeable impression which
you might have received from the contrast,
supposing them real, between the two bro-
thers. You did not believe in Joseph with
the same faith with which you believed in
Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality,
the former a no less pleasant poetical foil
to it. The comedy, I have said, is incon-
gruous; a mixture of Congreve with senti-
mental incompatibilities; the gaiety upon
the whole is buoyant; but it required the
consummate art of Palmer to reconcile the
discordant elements.

A player with Jack's talents, if we had

one now, would not dare to do the part in

the same manner. He would instinctively

avoid every turn which might tend to un-

334

COMEDY OP THE LAST CENTURY

realize, and so to make the character fas-
cinating. He must take his cue from his
spectators, who would expect a bad man
and a good man as rigidly opposed to each
other as the death-beds of those geniuses
are contrasted in the prints, which I am
sorry to say have disappeared from the
windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles,
of St. Paul's Churchyard memory— (an ex-
hibition as venerable as the adjacent cathe-
dral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good
man at the hour of death; where the
ghastly apprehensions of the former, — and
truly the grim phantom with his reality of
a toasting-fork is not to be despised,— so
finely contrast with the meek complacent
kissing of the rod,— taking it in like honey
and butter,— with which the latter submits
to the scythe of the gentle bleeder. Time,
who wields his lancet with the apprehen-
sive finger of a popular young ladies' sur-
geon. What flesh, like loving grass, would
not covet to meet half-way the stroke of
such a delicate mower?— John Palmer was
twice an actor in this exquisite part. He
was playing to you all the while that he was
playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. You
had the first intimation of a sentiment
before it was on his lips. His altered voice
was meant to you, and you were to suppose
335

ESSAYS OF ELIA

that his fictitious co-flutterers on the stage
perceived nothing at all of it. What was it
to you if that half reality, the husband, was
overreached by the puppetry— or the thin
thing (Lady Teazle's reputation) was per-
suaded it was dying of a plethory? The
fortunes of Othello and Desdemona were
not concerned in it. Poor Jack has passed
from the stage in good time, that he did not
live to this our age of seriousness. The
pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in
good time. His manner would scarce have
passed current in our day. We must love
or hate— acquit or condemn— censure or
pity— exert our detestable coxcombry of
moral judgment upon everything. Joseph
Surface, to go down now, must be a down-
right revolting villain— no compromise—
his first appearance must shock and give
horror— his specious plausibilities, which
the pleasurable faculties of our fathers wel-
comed with such hearty greetings, knowing
that no harm (dramatic harm even) could
come, or was meant to come, of them, must
inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles
(the real canting person of the scene— for
the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior
legitimate ends, but his brother's profes-
sions of a good heart center in downright
self-satisfaction) must be loved, and Joseph
336

COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY

hated. To balance one disagreeable reality
with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no
longer the comic idea of a fretful old bache-
lor bridegroom, whose teasings, while King
acted it, were evidently as much played off
at you, as they were meant to concern any-
body on the stage,— he must be a real per-
son, capable in law of sustaining an injury
—a person towards whom duties are to be
acknowledged— the genuine crim. con. an-
tagonist of the villainous seducer Joseph.
To realize him more, his sufferings under
his unfortunate match must have the down-
right pungency of life— must (or should)
make you not mirthful but uncomfortable,
just as the same predicament would move
you in a neighbor or old friend.

The delicious scenes which give the play
its name and zest, must affect you in the
same serious manner as if you heard the
reputation of a dear female friend attacked
in your real presence. Crabtree and Sir
Benjamin— those poor snakes that live but
in the sunshine of your mirth— must be
ripened by this hotbed process of realiza-
tion into asps or amphisbsenas; and Mrs.
Candor— 0! frightful!— become a hooded
serpent. 0! who that remembers Parsons
and Dodd— the wasp and butterfly of the
School for Scandal— in those two char-
337

ESSAYS OF ELIA

acters; and charming natural Miss Pope,
the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished
from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter
part— would forego the true scenic delight
—the escape from life— the ohlivion of con-
sequences—the holiday harring out of the
pedant Reflection— those Saturnalia of two
or three brief hours, well won from the
world— to sit instead at one of our modern
plays— to have his coward conscience (that
forsooth must not be left for a moment)
stimulated with perpetual appeals— dulled
rather, and blunted, as a faculty without
repose must be— and his moral vanity pam-
pered with images of notional justice, no-
tional beneficence, lives saved without the
spectator's risk, and fortunes given away
that cost the author nothing?

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely
cast in all its parts as this manager's com-
edy. Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs.
Abington in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the
original Charles, had retired when I first
saw it. The rest of the characters, with
very slight exceptions, remained. I remem-
ber it was then the fashion to cry down
John Kemble, who took the part of Charles
after Smith; but, I thought, very unjustly.
Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the
eye with a certain gaiety of person. He
338

COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY

brought with him no somber recollections
of tragedy. He had not to expiate the fault
of having pleased beforehand in lofty dec-
lamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of
Richard to atone for. His failure in these
parts was a passport to success in one of so
opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could
judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made
up for more personal incapacity than he
had to answer for. His harshest tones in
this part came steeped and dulcified in good
humor. He made his defects a grace. His
exact declamatory manner, as he managed
it, only served to convey the points of his
dialogue with more precision. It seemed
to head the shafts to carry them deeper.
Not one of his sparkling sentences was lost.
I remember minutely how he delivered
each in succession, and cannot by any effort
imagine how any of them could be altered
for the better. No man could deliver bril-
liant dialogue— the dialogue of Congreve or
of Wycherley— because none understood it
—half so well as John Kemble. His Valen-
tine, in Love for Love, was, to my recollec-
tion, faultless. He flagged sometimes in
the intervals of tragic passion. He would
slumber over the level parts of an heroic
character. His Macbeth has been known
to nod. But he always seemed to me to be
339

ESSAYS OF ELIA

particularly alive to pointed and witty dia-
logue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have
not been touched by any since him— the
playful court-bred spirit in which he conde-
scended to the players in Hamlet— the spor-
tive relief which he threw into the darker
shades of Richard— disappeared with him.
He had his sluggish moods, his torpors—
but they were the halting-stones and rest-
ing-place of his tragedy— politic savings,
and fetches of the breath— husbandry of
the lungs, where nature pointed him to be
an economist— rather, I think, than errors
of the judgment. They were, at worst, less
painful than the eternal tormenting unap-
peasable vigilance,— the "lidless dragon
eyes," of present fashionable tragedy.

340

ON THE ACTING OP MUNDEN

NOT many nights ago I had come home
from seeing this extraordinary per-
former in Cockletop; and when I re-
tired to my pillow, his whimsical image still
stuck by me, in a manner as to threaten
sleep. In vain I tried to divest myself of
it, by conjuring up the most opposite asso-
ciations. I resolved to be serious. I raised
up the gravest topics of life; private misery,
public calamity. All would not do:

—There the antic sate
Mocking our state—

his queer visnomy— his bewildering cos-
tume—all the strange things which he had
raked together— his serpentine rod swag-
ging about in his pocket— Cleopatra's tear,
and the rest of his relics— O'Keefe's wild
farce, and his wilder commentary— till the
passion of laughter, like grief in excess, re-
lieved itself by its own weight, inviting the
sleep which in the first instance it had
driven away.

341

ESSAYS OP ELIA

But I was not to escape so easily. No
sooner did I fall into slumbers, than the
same image, only more perplexing, assailed
me in the shape of dreams. Not one Mun-
den, but five hundred, were dancing before
me, like the faces which, whether you will
or no, come when you have been taking
opium— all the strange combinations, which
this strangest of all strange mortals ever
shot his proper countenance into, from the
day he came commissioned to dry up the
tears of the town for the loss of the now
almost forgotten Edwin. O for the power
of the pencil to have fixed them when I
awoke! A season or two since, there was
exhibited a Hogarth gallery. I do not see
why there should not be a Munden gallery.
In richness and variety, the latter would
not fall far short of the former.

There is one face of Farley, one face of
Knight, one (but what a one it is !) of Listen;
but Munden has none that you can properly
pin down, and call his. When you think
he has exhausted his battery of looks, in
unaccountable warfare with your gravity,
suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set
of features, like Hydra. He is not one, but
legion; not so much a comedian, as a com-
pany. If his name could be multiplied like
his countenance, it might fill a playbill.
342

ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN

He, and he alone, literally makes faces : ap-
plied to any other person, the phrase is a
mere figure, denoting certain modifications
of the human countenance. Out of some
invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his
friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them
out as easily. I should not be surprised to
see him some day put out the head of a
river-horse: or come forth a pewit, or lap-
wing, some feathered metamorphosis.

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Chris-
topher Curry— in old Dorn ton— diffuse a
glow of sentiment which has made the pulse
of a crowded theater beat like that of one
man; when he has come in aid of the pulpit,
doing good to the moral heart of a people.
I have seen some faint approaches to this
sort of excellence in other players. But in
the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands
out as single and unaccompanied as Ho-
garth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no
followers. The school of Munden began,
and must end, with himself.

Can any man wonder, like him? can any
man see ghosts, like him? or fight with his
own s/iftdozi;— "SESSA"— as he does in that
strangely neglected thing, the Cobbler of
Preston — where his alternations from the
Cobbler to the Magnifico, and from the Mag-
nifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of the

343

ESSAYS OF ELIA

spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some
Arabian Night were being acted before him.
Who like him can throw, or ever attempted
to throw, a preternatural interest over the
commonest daily-life objects? A table or
a joint-stool, in his conception, rises into a
dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It
is invested with constellatory importance.
You could not speak of it with more defer-
ence, if it were mounted into the firmament.
A beggar in the hands of Michelangelo,
says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of Poverty.
So the gusto of Munden antiquates and en-
nobles what it touches. His pots and his
ladles are as grand and primal as the seeth-
ing-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic
vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by
him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He under-
stands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He
stands wondering, amid the commonplace
materials of life, like primeval man with
the sun and stars about him.

344

tRB%'^8

<<:>»,.
\

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

0 014 494 853 1

,;• i.i\

■.}ib'

:.;'/i-